Yesterday was really tough. I got to Erica and just cried. I told her I was confused, had no sense of priority, and lost the sense of a solid core, did not feel connected to her. She said all those things were still here, it was just that I wasn’t connected. I knew that was true and that’s a step forward: not no god, not no Jesus, not no Erica, not no Tiny One — just having lost the connection to them. Erica asked what had happened. I said a lot of small disappointments and a big one. I told her about Barry telling me my ideas for discussion groups would not work in his congregation. She asked me to feel my feelings, she said I must be hurt. Yes, when I paid attention my heart hurt so bad. I cried some more. (Yes, I disconnect from my own feelings the same way I disconnect from Erica and god.) I was curled up and hunched over. She asked what that was about and I said I was trying to hide. She said she thought I was angry, that being coiled up tight was preparation for striking out. At that point I lost the ability to feel my body. Suddenly there was no information coming from my body. I stayed with it, feeling confused, then I saw or made up an explosion and then it was immediately doused by fire hoses. Erica had said the anger was the anger of protest. I could get in touch with the idea that this shouldn’t have happened to me. Accepting that I might be angry: “I tried so many times to get something started and nobody wanted it.” She told me about a woman who tried to get some classes going at AVA Gallery in Lebanon, and too few people signed up. That just made me feel more discouraged, ready to give up. O yes, trying to feel my anger (or protest) at Barry I saw it wasn’t about Barry but about all my defeats.
Thinking back over the last weeks, I see that when I connected with Tiny One and my love for her, and then when my heart made a solid connection with Tiny One — I had my usual thought — “I’ve arrived, I’ve healed.” Then when I lost it, it seemed a little like it was gone forever, but at the same time I suspected that this “down” was just part of the process. This morning, looking back at how unhappy and desperate I was yesterday, I can see very clearly that it is part of the process, that the happiness and wholeness were showing me what was possible, I will get there again. This all feels a lot like “object constancy” but on a different level. Learning that things are still there even though I can’t feel them. Learning that even when I’m depressed, or confused and lost, I haven’t gone down into the same old pit. Instead of seeing myself as climbing a mountain, and when I fall I go all the way back to the bottom, I’m seeing my life as a pilgrimage through a difficult landscape, a “down” is just a valley and if I go on, I’ll find another “up.”
I’m also wondering if part of my anger/protest was at Erica. Stop telling me these things that can’t possibly be true. I noticed that was when I lost touch with my body. It was too scary for Tiny One to be angry at Erica. Erica thought that part of me pushing outward was a wake up call — “Can’t you see that I’m hurting? Wake up!”
I got food to go at the Co-op instead of eating there and writing. My eyes were so red that I wore my sunglasses to hide that I had been crying.
When I got home I realized that I’m able to get angry on behalf of bees, and whales, and the downtrodden, poor, and sick, but I’m not able to get angry on my own behalf.