(Started Friday September 9th) I woke up today with the sense of having to sit at the page to write and wondering if memories just bubble up and if there is a difference between that bubbling and "discursive rehashing". The answer arose, almost automatically to say that there is a difference. The memories just bubble, innocently, and they may have a purpose, i.e. to serve and/or inform the present. "Discursive rehashing" would be more akin to allowing myself to be completely taken by the content or storyline forgetting to be in the here-now; or it would also be more akin to when I am purposefully attempting to retrieve a piece of information, as when I am in a test. But this is not a test, and the memories that bubbled arose at different times this past week. What seems interesting is that while these memories arose at different moments, I had an immediate sense each time that they were linked, and that they served a purpose. How they were linked, and the purpose also arose spontaneously in my mind. So, to continue honoring the renewal of writing as a way to extend myself to others, I write this in a delayed response to a friend.
First memory. At age 19, I ended a relationship with a man who had chosen to go to college in a different province, and who would return to visit the capital city where I lived every two or three weeks. He was extremely jealous, and this made him frequently lash out verbally to belittle my friends, classmates, and relatives, i.e. basically anyone with whom I related. He frequently flaunted how he and his choices were somehow superior to everyone else’s and thus his visits were punctuated by his need to put down what I did with my friends, or what my friends did while he was not around. I grew somewhat afraid of him. But mostly, I was afraid of how I felt and how I acted when I was around him. So one day, I did it. I do not remember the reasons I gave him for wanting to break up. But I do remember that my friends were concerned for me, and and they worried about what he would do, but I did it anyway. I ended our relationship because I had to.
The phone call. After we broke up, he phoned me during one of his visits because he wanted us to talk. And I remember the ensuing suicide threat. During the call he said that he would kill himself because of me… Today, I am sure there was more to that call because I remember crying, and hiding my sobs from my family because like any overt display of emotion it could prompt adverse reactions. I remember telling him that I would not be looking over his shoulder and, that I would not go to his house; that I hoped he would not attempt to take his own life. But when the conversation ended, I was shaking with fear mixed with guilt feelings and doubt: Would he actually do it? Did I make him do it? Is it my fault? Waves of pain…
I think it was through his younger brother that I found out that his family had found him on the floor, unconscious, with his mouth full of pills. Sad. Intense.
Second memory. Fast forward in time. My marriage became very strained when my ex-husband and I decided to become Peace Corps Volunteers. But we loved each other deeply, and we tried, as best we could and knew how, to make things work both during and after service.
Upon our return to the US, we continued our lives as best we could, and our main priority became my exhusband’s going back to school to finish his degree and later, his work. He wanted to to go Washington DC to continue working with environmental development. I believed that his heart would be broken and disillusioned by having to look at American politics from within, but I could not follow him to DC. I did not want to be at the center of American government and politics. And then, an auspicious coincidence, a call from a childhood friend that lived in Florida. My friend could offer me work, and he also needed my help. So, my ex-husband and I decided that I would go to FL while he’d go to DC, at least for a while. And the split between us deepened. I felt lucky to have found a friend from childhood and the cultural comfort this brought me. But I also felt abandoned (maybe a cultural pull), not cared for: How can you let me go? How can your plans and dreams take continuous precedence? Why was it so easy for you to not ask me to stay, to not try to create an alternative where we could both be together and you could follow his dream? Where is "us as a couple" and "me as your wife"?
We talked every day. We wrote letters. He did what he did and I worked as a teacher and helped my friend. But also, I lived for the first time in many years in an environment surrounded by Latinamericans. I danced, I worked, I sang. I was "adopted" into a Venezuelan family: a mother and her daughter. I fell in love briefly. I lived integrating everything that was happening, fully alive.
After perhaps a year and a half of living there, my ex-husband and I decided to get together again. He needed to return to grad school, and we wanted to keep trying to work things out between us. But it seems that the wedge between us was too big. I did not know at the time how to re-open my heart. And I felt once again brushed aside. My ex-husband asked me to go out, to go dancing, and to the movies with other friends/people/men, while he stayed home… And while I was happy to be with someone that was not aggressively jealous, I also felt somewhat "tossed aside" and my previous questions reasserted themselves: How can you let me go? Why won’t you fight for me/us? How can you push me to go spend time with others? How can your plans and dreams take continuous precedence? Where is "us as a couple" and "me as your wife"? In the midst of this, I fell in love with someone else. In so doing, I betrayed my husband and us. No need for details. I was sad. And I was angry. The anger masked the layers and subsequent waves of pain and the remorse I felt, not for falling in love, but, for having caused pain to someone dear.
Waves and layers… I have spent many years after these events searching for myself in the context of relationships. And while I can say that I truly loved the men I have been fortunate to live with afterwards, I lived my life still operating from a posture of emotional shielding and punishment. I could not allow myself to entrust anybody with my deepest feelings because all training in my family of origin had prepared me for a life of shaming, emotional shielding and hiding behind masks. And I also would not allow myself to truly be happy (punishment), because I had never truly believed that I was worthy of warmth and happiness, of being cherished or having someone to cherish. I had betrayed others, therefore I had no right… Something like that…
Humility humbleness NOT denigrating nor self-punishing…but seeing the hidden lessons…
Space. I have been on my own, without a lover or companion since 2011. And I have only recently begun to explore in my heart-mind the possibilities of what it would mean to be in a relationship. Many questions arise fueled by the very old habit of feeling that I don’t deserve to feel joy. Monkey-Brain tortures me with many reasons for my not deserving: because I am too old; because I have not learned to fit in this culture; because I do not really know what it means to actually feel love for anybody or what it means to be a fully embodied human. Or simply because I have hurt others, and for that I should atone. However, I understand the Buddhist teachings and my teachers as saying that any and all aspects of being alive are indeed the ultimate Guru. And, because of this understanding I need to look within, and continue opening my heart in as much as I can, to any and all aspects of being alive. I am grateful for the teachings that allow me, and require me to continue looking and re-framing in order to serve.
Re-framing/ Re-casting: So, I continue to wake up, slowly, thought by thought, and in the space between thoughts, and with the touch of old friends and new ones. I am writing because the seemingly unrelated events/examples/memories that arose in response to my friend’s pain, are indeed linked. They are linked through karma-non-linear-time. I linked them with the thread of the felt-sense of having betrayed others; and with the thread of my not being able to give something that society, or a Christian-informed lifestyle mandated as my duty at the time the events actually took place. But, from the mud comes a very tiny and clear lotus: clarity.
And thanks to the pain I witnessed, today I feel humbled, not humiliated or in need of punishment. I feel humbleness, and the warmth that it can bring. And with that, I also feel better able to express at least onto the space of this e-page what I could not articulate before.
Dear friend in pain, If I could, I would wind time backwards and hold you. I want you to know that without being in your skin, I understand somewhat what you are going through. I know that when we/I hurt others (or believe we have done so) in our attempt to honor our deepest-felt heart or beliefs,
that when we/I leave others behind as we walk away from situations that do not serve our growth anymore,
that when we/I hurt others because we do not give them a say or choice in our decision,
or when we/I leave because if we/I stayed it would be at the cost of causing more harm to all involved,
there is no escape: we/I will feel pain, the aftermath, i.e. waves of regret for having caused pain, and waves of doubts of many sorts. So please hold yourself with true maitri (skt) and compassion in the knowledge that causing pain was not the intention.
Sad Clarity: I am touched by the humility/humbleness I felt after allowing the memories to sift from underneath and connect. I feel not better, nor worse than other people, just deeply human. And from this understanding, of knowing that I have been betrayed by others in the past and that I have also betrayed or broken other people’s hearts, I can safely tell you now that it is possible to live with an honest-open heart, and that it is possible to love, and to begin opening the doors to communicating from a sense of wholeness in spite of any fears and hesitations we may feel. Fear will never go away, but we can soar through it if we don’t solidify our discomfort by pushing it away, or attempting to make it change into something other than what it is (doing so would be aggression towards ourselves).
We are human. Embodied in this case of karma-ridden flesh and mind, we can learn to hold ourselves within an open and dignified heart. Basic goodness-emptiness is the soft and tender spot that remains when we allow ourselves to feel-it-all. It is the spot of health and wholeness. And it never dissipates, it is always there for us to access when we allow ourselves to be touched by any and all things. Sometimes, the lessons are "grokked" immediately. At others, they come slowly, as if they were being milked. I pray this writing contributes to lightening someone’s pain. May all beings be happy.
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