Waking Up in a Busy World: Sweet, Sweet Sadness

Something sweet can be found in sadness, a soft melancholy whisper that breathes life into a withering soul, filling the void where apathy once sat.
Me- written years ago

I am feeling sad but it is a good non-resistant sadness. I am just letting it trickle through my eyes and down my face. I am not overwhelmed by it...it is just there. It is kind of nice, taking some pressure off some old wounds within me. Ahhhh. It just feels good to release.

Is this suffering? No...just a gentle release of at least some old stored stuff that really, really needs to come out. I do not want to create story around this and just be able to accept the feeling, the release. I want to allow myself to experience it fully and for the most part I can do that now...just sit with it. It is so nice to be able to do that. But...story does come back .

Sometimes , this thought, "I am so broken." comes into my mind and my experience. I see so clearly and accept what past trauma has done to my exterior self, creating a need for me to protect the vulnerable parts. I look back and see how my chronic fear of being hurt again made me act defensively offensive towards people who were kind to me, how I could never truly understand why they were kind to me; how my need to keep this shell intact prevented me from seeing their pain and meeting their needs in a way I would have wanted to. It made me selfish, egoic, always trying to create this redeemed version of myself to hide the brokenness within. My seeking to create a protective shell over the wounded parts pinched me off from who I really am. I was not my best Self and I was not always a very good friend.

Hmmm! Anyway I am thinking of one friend, in particular, who I befriended months after my mother had died. She sat in front of me in grade ten math class and if it wasn't for her I would never have passed math, and I probably wouldn't have passed the lessons Life was teaching me either. She had a big, beautiful heart and she liked me. I could never understand why she liked me or laughed at my jokes. We became really good friends, best friends actually. My own life was very, very chaotic at the time and I found a sweet reprieve in her presence and in her home that I so desperately needed. I honestly don't know where I would be without that. She was the first person I ever spoke some of my trauma story to. It was like relieving me of a burden that lay heavy on my heart for 16 years...telling a secret I was told never to tell but that was so very, very necessary to tell. She was a very, very important part of my life. I don't think I did anything for her but get her in trouble.

I, of course, was not only broken but I was a 16 year old girl who like most sixteen year old girls wanted to be liked, popular, seen as pretty,cool and all those things. I also needed to redeem myself by creating an image that would hide all the broken pieces inside. So while I befriended her, one of the most authentic people I ever met, I was intent on creating a very inauthentic suit of armour around myself. That did not go well for our friendship. My attempt to be cool...made me uncool. My pain would not stay beneath the shell...it kept coming out and often, misdirected and uncontained, it hurt those I loved the most. I became, many times, a bitch to her. She had to have seen me as a selfish bitch, a terrible friend and nothing but a burden on her life. How could she not? Yet she remained patient and kind. Well, I never asked her what she thought of me...I was afraid to. We kind of grew apart...I kept building this redeeming self to create a shell around me...and that became my focus in life. So into preserving, "me-me" ...I neglected to tell her how much her friendship meant and I neglected the God daughter she gave me.

Recently, and ironically our children got together and are having a child together. Though I love her daughter as one of my own, (She was friends with my eldest for years before she and my son started dating and I have come to know her as a sweet and kind girl.) I was resistant to the relationship with my son because I was told by others that they were involved in something very dangerous together and my fear kicked in. My need to protect my then very vulnerable son from what I felt (and was told) was her doing made me a mother bear! I became defensively offensive again...well honest, out right, telling it like it is which did not go over well with her daughter or with her ( understandably). Things are different now but sometimes wounds don't heal completely. I never apologized to her nor did I even speak to her for years ( only because of my own shame). That is until last night when we spoke over the phone about the approaching baby shower. I started crying then after hanging up...just a slow trickle of tears and I never stopped. Hmmm!

The phone call triggered me to look at my brokenness and how it impacted my life and the life of others over the years. I see the shell I wore and still do to some extent, the shell she knew me by. I see my own brokenness under that shell and wonder if she sees it enough to forgive me for my behaviour over the years. I don't know. If my time here is indeed running out, I want her to know how grateful I am for her presence in my life and how sorry I am for not being a better friend.

Awkward Trickles

So much defectiveness

in this stinking, rotting shell

I wear around myself,

gapping holes, pieces missing,

allowing trickles…just trickles

of much too thick

inner fluid to drip out…

offering, pathetically offering,

a semi sweet release

you cannot see,

of decades of pressure

against my bruised and battered flesh.