Look, we’re animals. We’re also human beings but we’re animals first, and we have beastly traits. First and foremost among these is the drive to survive. So survival can sometime mean stuffing your feelings. If one is in a situation where to feel what is happening to you would be lethal, would cause your psyche to crash, then you learn to numb out. This is very useful within the circumstance. I suspect hostages and inmates understand this very well. (BTW, loving the company I keep, here. Shit.)
But, setting aside the intellectual analysis, the compassion, and the spiritual grace with which one copes with the situation, what do you do with the goddamned energy of it all? From a purely physics perspective, what the hell do you do with the volume of shit that has been shoved down your throat for a decade or more? I don't want to pay it forward. What feat of alchemy must one perform to transmogrify it to something useful? Or at least not harmful? And how do you avoid hurting someone else in the process?!?!?
You know, a 90 minute yoga class in a scorchingly hot room takes the edge off. Wine afterwards permits sleep. Punishing runs, swims and 6 hour bike rides through a Georgia
I cannot stop a landslide. I cannot. So I guess I’ll just sit and watch it. When I was a kid I used to go into the ocean for hours at a time. I secretly loved the wildness of it, the feeling of losing control. I found solace in getting tumbled by a wave, over and over, no different than the sand, seaweed and shells that got kicked up from the ocean’s floor. Able to hold my breath for a long time, I would enjoy the specter of being inside a crashing wave. I’d open my eyes and watch the foam and froth all around me, listen to the primordial sounds of the sea as I tumbled, tumbled and eventually resurfaced in the sunshine and laughter of the other beachgoers.
Similarly, Pema advises sitting with it. Not moving away from the feeling. She promises that it will eventually burn itself out. I don’t have any choice. It is what I must do, but I am a coward and I must confess to wondering: will it incinerate me first? Frankly, self-immolation is preferable to the alternative.
How to re-channel. The energy does indeed have to go somewhere. It can compress inside our muscles (neck, back, facial muscles), concentrate over the heart, resulting in rapid heartbeats, or--maybe--leave the body in some other way of energy transference. I was thinking about Kelli Wells and others like her last night. Her smile looks more innocent and sincere than I would expect on someone with her history. Watching her accept her bronze award, I suddenly understood in a new way what it means to live your life as if you deserve the good things you've worked for, not in remembrance of your abuser. How she does it, I have yet to fully learn. I don't have that all figured out. Somehow, though, she managed to reject the curse of her tormentor, to win the war against it. It strikes me that every ounce of negative energy that is allowed to smolder is a win for the abuser, a loss for the victim. I'd like to learn how to cut my losses, accept the injustices of the past, and own every day of my life going forward--to sit back and enjoy the relief that comes from being far away from the hurtful situation, as well as the satisfaction of being the victor because I--not my abusers--own control over how much joy I will get out of life. It is a long journey toward permanently erasing those voice from my head. Just as long is the journey to neutralizing the hatred that continues to burn, brighter and deadlier some days than others.
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