From my journal for July 20, 1996
I’ve been praying to the God of Love for help. I don’t know if I wrote about it — last time maybe driving back from Beverly’s I was again in that awful place of the purely material world with no spiritual energy in it — the trees waving their beautiful glittering green leaves, just the surface, no love in it, no connection and my heart like a stone. I decided that even if the Power that made the Universe was indifferent, even malevolent, just grinding out trees and rocks and planets and abusers and blood and death indiscriminately, that there still had to be a Deva of Love somehow, somewhere, there had to be such a being. And that’s where I want to offer my service, not to the Creator but to the God of Love. Then I had a qualm — how could the God of Love want my service, unworthy miserable creature that I am. Then I had to laugh at myself, surely any “god of love” worthy of the name would not spurn any offer of service at all. So then I asked for help in learning to love because that seemed to me to be the only worthwhile thing to do with my human life.
Got back to an immediate need to be loving and was able to do it!
I got back from that drive to a very upset Dana and he told me that he had been having sexual feelings for Annette since he went to visit her at her house, and that that morning she had told him she was aware of his feelings and she didn’t want to have an affair. So he came home, feeling completely rejected and despairing, the old wound of Cate opened up again. Fortunately, it was easy to be there for him, my heart just went out to him, I wasn’t hurt or angry, I just held him and let him cry. Lynelle came over later and was a big help, because he was doing that kind of compulsive crying where everything seems to stop that I always find so scary. I’m afraid he’ll go off into the void and not come back. But Lynelle was able to get him to talk about it, and with her there I wasn’t so scared that he would get lost.
Dana and I have been trying to process the difficulty in our relationship due to the fact that I have been unable to be sexual. I had been trying to find some reason for this difficulty, possible sexual abuse as a child? without success. It will be several years and after the divorce that I find out the problem was having been traumatized as a baby.
Trauma has to do with the reptilian brainstem, where the instinct of fight/flight/freeze is located. “Triggering” happens when some event reminds the being of the traumatizing experience. When triggered, it’s as though it’s happening again, in fact as far as the brain is concerned it is happening again. The instinct to fight or flee kicks in, but if the being can’t fight or flee, the default is freeze. If you are traumatized very early, a baby can’t fight or flee, so the body goes to freeze. Not only anger and fear can trigger the reflex, but sexual arousal will as well. When I am sexually aroused, my reptilian brainstem goes to freeze. That’s why I was unable to be sexual. Unfortunately I would turn on, and then freeze which was very frustrating.