Sixty-Three

August 25, 2023

My body has decided to quit on me and insists I slow down and try to write. I skipped two activities that I usually love in the last 24 hours. It’s been hard to write as it feels like a fast flowing current is always rushing through my mind. A writer friend told me long time ago that one can only dip in and pick out an handful to put on a blank page. 

 

So, two days before my 63^rd, I sit down and attempt that. I like to do a birthday reflection each year. Take bits of time off during my week and look at the year and my hopes for the next. This year my entire life is demanding attention with questions and more questions. Who am I, Why have I become who I am, Why is my body not co-operating with my desires, Why can’t I love myself more at this moment in time, Who do I want to be, etc. Perhaps aging and the growing sense of mortality make these urgent.

 

Anyone’s life is a huge story, a huge plot. A theme from one of the main sub-plots of my life has been prominent in this current rushing through. Trust.

 

It’s not surprising to me that in this patriarchal world that I live in, breaches of trust have come from male figures. My father died when I was ten and the male elders of the joint family system who were supposed to care for us betrayed my little family. And after his death the little girl that was me, was preyed upon by men in the family, again those who were supposed to protect me. And then again in my 36^th year I was betrayed by three men who I trusted most. One of these betrayals has healed considerably while the other two that were never acknowledged still feel confusingly raw.

 

I don’t know how healing can happen when the betrayer chooses to deny the betrayal? But I have grappled with internal healing and being able to trust masculine energy in this world. 

 

Last October after a betrayal (which I wrote about in a post Tiny Scattered Thoughts) I had two more shocks in quick succession by December. A physical trauma and another betrayal. And without realizing it I began running away from looking deeply into those shocks and they slipped into that deep abyss that is always beneath life — the abyss that can at any time sever our, perhaps illusionary, connection to reality. I needed slow healing but instead I packed my days with activity and did not deal with either the physical or the emotional pain in a soft, but controlled, way. 

 

I dealt with the physical trauma when pain pushed me into ER but I kept running from the emotional trauma, of the feeling of betrayal, and with that fear, and generalized anxiety, grew. And I ran more. 

 

For me healing comes in slow blank times. Finally my body demanded that I stop running and since last week I have tried to drop out of some activities and create empty spaces in which I can examine the shocks, the abyss. 

 

Betrayal is hard to face, especially when it comes from someone you trust. It confuses you, makes you wonder if it was your fault. It makes you leave your body and mind that is in unbearable ache. You feel foggy. Your decisions are off or you feel unable to decide. You feel like a deer caught in the lights of a car about to collide with it. Flight or fight or paralysis are the modes you operate from. 

 

And that has been my reality. I am finally facing the intense dark emotions that it has created, which I have suppressed and somatised into bodily ache. I am writing about it and though I have concerns on how to make it public I know I want to write cleanly, deeply, about it. I will only share it when the feeling of hurt, of anger, confusion, and of wanting retribution, has passed. Hence here it still is vague. 

 

Heavy topic pre-birthday. I crave lightness and joy for my 63^rd. But life is what it is and some birthdays are wonderfully happy and others not so much.