"I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it." - Oriah Mountain Dreamer
I think one of the most insulting things said to me, when Man Hands died, was "Get over it!" You do not get over that. Everything we work on is compounded with other issues. Mine is chronic pain from neuropathy and a knee that needs to be replaced pretty danged quick. Physical pain is horrible. Intellectual pain is a dull ache, betimes, when I know I am not tracking just right, and it does happen more and more. Emotional pain, in this life, is a given and we seem to focus on this one. Maybe it gets more attention, I am not sure. Spiritual pain is a whole other basket of hurt, betimes. We can ignore pain, any time, any way, whatever it takes. Feeling it is beyond just focusing on the pain, but focusing on the 'why.'
Everyone I know, who has invisible reasons for pain, are not typically given much notice. Suffering is suffering, though, and we need to sit with our own physical pain and get help to figure out how to relieve it or we will find it affects all the other quadrants. How many long nights without relief, have there been for us? many: Some nights, desperately so. When it is chronic, it is hell on earth to even anticipate what the next night is going to be like and how we might get through it. Yes, there are pills. Yes, I take them, but I am not very compliant and, for some reason, I allow myself to suffer as if it were a penance. Whew, epiphany right there. Do we take physical pain as penance? OMG. Perhaps we do.
In the last year of my life, I have noticed more dead air space in my brain. I cannot think of a dozen things at once, like I used to. It is disconcerting. I try not to over think it. That does not help me at all. I have a sense of my memory card getting full. "Where did I out my_____" has become "What are keys?" betimes. I read that, if you forget something, if you remember it later, you are safe, and it is normal. But, if you forget something and it never is remembered, then you are in trouble. I can still find stuff. I know I am computing slower, at 71.8, though. I could worry about it. I have faith I will remember something later. If not, then I did not need to remember. I cannot deny it. It, sometimes, denies me. I know that Alzheimer Disease runs heavy in my maternal side. I do not want to come to that. I fear that, bigtime. OMG, I have secrets I cannot babble..the fear, oh, the fear...lol.
Emotionally, things have calmed down. I know the uselessness of worry. I pretty much take my lumps as they come. I get quiet and ruminate key triggers, and try to sort my proverbial "chite' out on my own. I learned long ago not to tell a woman not to cry. That is a travesty. We are given to run and comfort and say "don't cry!" When what we need to do is rush over and hold her and tell her to cry all she wants. Girls that grew up in our generation were afraid of seeming too emotional. It was not good. Happy happy happy was the requirement and we were conditioned to think we needed a hysterectomy/tubal ligation if we were too emotional. I was one. Our mother's generation had it more brutal. So, now it trickles down and we have learned and in our learning we turn to other women and affirm the need for them to cry it out. I still have a hard time crying. I always felt that, if I started, I might not stop. Then, I found out that was true when Man Hands passed away. Again, I do acknowledge when I feel sad, when I feel grief come to visit again, but I still do not share it openly. I know now, as well, how it feels to really sorrow. I have not had to sorrow in such a way since then.
I truly am feeling a sense of wanting to deepen my spirituality. I am coming up to then end of my grieving time (end of August) when I can, again, go to ceremonies and gatherings. It is not that I crave a place to put and use my spirituality, it is that I want a comfortable place to sit with it. I am not questioning or searching, no, but many do and it aches for them. Some are bitter ( I once was). Some are fearful. I finally found a place and a way of spirituality that has bits of many good ways that I found to fit my soul. I cannot let anyone own it, or tell it what to believe or not to believe, how to show and share it. I must walk alone with this, but I have been without a group for these years and I feel the longing building. Yes, I do ache for that.
Heavy-hearted Ocean of Ache
moon
draws concentric circles of itself
stars
blink their eyes in concern
bald
patch of ocean deep water meadow
moves
covers in slow flow and ebb of sea
in
this springsummer heat
when
cove of heart holds secrets
barnacles
clinging for life on whatever stone
found
alone in constant lap
of
watery mouth that whispers
rowing
against currents away from thoughts
diving
like sea birds for watery treasures
tied
with strings of seaweed
do
not swim out too far
the
undertow reason perhaps
to be so
if
I were to decide to go
I
would not need weight for me to sink
into
whirlpool moonlight urge
my
heart is heavy enough as it is
©Carol
Desjarlais 6.14.19
1.Do
we take physical pain as penance?
2.Do
you feel your intelligence deeper or wane as you age? What are those subtle differences?
3.What
makes you cry, really cry, unabashedly?
Can you do it? Are you okay to
sit with someone who cries?
4. Are
you at home with your spirituality/your soul?
Are you at ease with those who understand soul/spirit differently than
you?
No comments:
Post a Comment