Missing Connection

July 21, 2020

These days when I try to read an headache begins to come on. My eyes hurt, and tension builds around them and the forehead. I feel an almost physical barrier forming between my eyes and the page. It makes me feel panicked and I try harder to read. The pain around my eyes intensifies. If it is a non-fiction book I try to go back to the beginning and read words I’ve already read, or move to someplace in the ‘future’ and read words I would have got to a few days later. As none of this works my chest tightens in anxiety and I feel like I am losing something precious – my connection to the words and ideas of others, through print. I don’t like it.

Then I try to think what might be right about it. Why should I turn off from others and reach inside? I think perhaps I just need to dig deeper within right now and that too is something I am resisting, or rather I feel perhaps I have forgotten how to do. 

To write, I feel I must know myself. But the act of writing makes me know myself, and if I share it with others I make myself known to them. I keep going back to this one thought – that what I write changes when I know it is for myself, and when it is not. Lately somehow when I try to write in my paper journal I get the same headache and other symptoms  that I described above and they only disappear if I push away the journal and pen. I try using a different colour ink but, my no matter what my eyes begin to hurt madly if I try to write. It feels like I am cut off from a vital way in which I find myself, and heal. 

I feel irritable with people these days. If I was writing in my paper journal I would name these folks. I feel irritable with others who, perhaps because they are overwhelmed, have stopped being responsible. Those who want others to do tasks they used to do and refuse to help with those tasks they have expertise with – leaving the other struggling. I feel irritable when I call these people out on this and they deny it. I think I need to have compassion towards them, but before that compassion towards that part of myself that wants to be irresponsible. I should set up a time in the day -- not evening or night, but the day -- an hour perhaps, when I choose to be just that. Then I know I will be less irritable towards those needing to drop responsibility. But beyond that there is more – I know that being irresponsible is self-care. It is also a way that the mind and self opens beyond known structures and one gets into the unknown.

The other behaviour I feel irritable about is the way some peeps keep changing their mind. They say one thing and I make my plans around that, and then they say something else and I have to change my plans. With so much else going on this constant shifting really is frustrating. Perhaps I need to give myself freedom to change my plans? I don’t quite know what to do with this one yet. But it is linked to being responsible, having integrity, not messing with others. As I write I do see there are things I promised which I no longer want to do. I want the freedom to change my, mind but I don’t want it to impact the other. 

I am really missing another vital connection in my life. Face to face connection over an extended afternoon -- turning into night -- with another. The slow revealing of the self to another, the reflection back which helps me see parts of myself I have missed seeing. Conversation that deepens the relationship and the self. Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp chat etc only go so far. Perhaps in time I will be able to do this. 

When I write this blog I don’t get an headache. But I don’t really reveal myself the way I do in my private journal, nor do I have the feedback from another that might help me see myself from their perspective like I would in dialogue. 

I just remembered something I dreamt last night. I am in a train compartment – the one with sleepers not plush chairs – with others, it is crowded but we are sharing and supporting. Then Modi comes in -- and as if he is entitled -- he pushes people off and lies down on a sleeper…

I will ponder who the Modi in me is. I need to get back to taxes – I didn’t do some stuff properly, and I am helping sis and mum with theirs now.