The Flying Fists of Growing Freedom

Intro: I’m living at my mom’s house until my new apartment is available in 3 weeks. This is going to be a long 3 weeks.

 

I punched a door today.

I punched it 12 times, hard.

It cracked.

Its a solid wood door, and I shivered it with my fist. Felt damn good too. A couple of bloody knuckles was worth finding out how I was feeling.

Yes, I mean that. Its not figurative. I’d just retreated, baffled by my annoyance, and had decided to ‘forget about it’ and move on with other things. Then I asked myself: “What is it that I’m feeling?”, and WHAM……WHAM.WHAM.WHAM……WHAM.

“Oh.”

I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me right now. I’d be scared of that inner rage, pain, snarled je ne sais qua that is hiding from its owner. When is that going to pop out on me?

And I don’t mean that figuratively either. I let go of one friend for just this reason. He started to frighten me with his potential boom. It leaked out when I disappointed him, and I saw how big the bottle was that held that genie’s fist.

I don’t want to be around that kind of threat. But I suppose that many people have both the capacity and some content to the rage bottle. Hmm. Well, I can’t un-befriend myself, nor would I want to, so I’ll just have to deal with it and hope I can understand.

……

Backing up, the flying fists of Growing Freedom were prompted by an incident with my mother. I’d been to my therapist earlier in the day, and was feeling pretty good. Hopeful even. I felt a bit closer to taking that big next step and really trusting the guy with my shamed and hidden inner core, wherein coexist both my greatest and truest self, and also my most irrational and defended false beliefs or ‘working models’ of the world.

I was just going to watch the Champions League Semi-Final with Man U. and Barcalona when she came home from martyr duty. I’ve started to think of all her projects as martyr duty. She slaves away for everyone else and has piss poor relationships with her flesh and blood. I understand her motivations though in the ‘free labor’ department. I unfortunately inherited them. Though thankfully I’ve become somewhat aware of what its all about, and am less prone to scurrying around ‘helping’ everyone.

So, she comes home, and this:

Mom: “Any messages for me?” (slightly annoyed look on her face)

Me: “No, I just got home as well. Maybe on the phone, but I’ve not checked. What have you been up to?” (genuinely interested in finding out how she’s doing, letting her vent if need be, so that it doesn’t come out sideways….on me)

Mom: “I was painting all morning for Friend X” (looking more the martyr part I know she loves, but also looking more annoyed in general)

Me: “Wow, well, I’m just getting some lunch here….”

Mom: “I’m off to more martyr duty (church this time) in a bit….”

Mom: “By the way…” (oh shit, that is never good)

Mom: “You owe me BIG time. I had to take out the recycling this morning”.

Me: “Sorry about that. I got home too late from my own martyr duty to get it done” (I was helping a friend with stream data gathering)

Mom: silence. She neither acknowledges my reply, nor offers a way for me to repay this BIG debt. Right, whatever. She doesn’t want resolution, she wants to covet her anger and lord it around as a reason to be a bitch. As if martyring herself isn’t enough. Well, of course it isn’t, because shame isn’t healed by becoming a busy body do-gooder. And it certainly isn’t healed by relishing superiority over others, which is what her brand of martyrdom is all about.

Me: angry

……..

Yeah, a nothing scene. I know. I thought so too, but man was I angry! I still am to some degree.

I came up with a tongue in cheek saying today for therapy patients with mommy issues: “Well, at least I know I’ll always have her disapproval”.

Anger. Hmm. Does it always cover pain, or is it a primary? Does it always mean that we want something to be different?

I started to ask myself these questions. I went and drove out to a beatiful pond in Hunt Valley, MD. I took my journal, but I just sat there thinking, listening to the red winged blackbirds, cardinals, catbirds, and buzzing bees. So what is it that want, that my anger is about?

I want to be respected, not used as a garbage bin, not bullied to relieve a parent’s own insecurities and fears. I want to have a parent that I can share my weakness with, and not just guard against.

But I don’t have parents like that.

I never did.

So why do I not move on? Why wish for something that is never going to happen. Each of my parents has demonstrated again and again that they are not good trust objects.

But this wounding cycle continues, and I know that I must live through it and not run from it if I’m ever to find and keep better relationships, good relationships, enduring and flowering relationships. The anger clouds keep me from understanding what they are hiding. I cannot lash out. Well, I can, but that just rachets things up, and if I leave them with anger, I don’t think I’ll be able to really move on in spirit.

If you abandon a baby in refuse dump full of predators, that’s child abuse, right?

If you bully a baby with fists and feet, that’s abuse, right?

But what if you do these things to your child with words and perpetual pressures, anger and threats?

What if you abandon someone in spirit, but remain in body? Manipulate by witholding from them their most basic needs, in order to satisfy your insecure need for power and control?

In the end I do not think there is too much difference. Physical wounds may be healable, or they may be fatal. Wounds to the spirit, mind, and emotional development of a person are just as greivous.

How many teenagers kill themselves, or abandon themselves to complete irresponsibility in lieu of death? Do you really think that these young people are the murderers of themselves?

How many people are free of neuroses, and can live their lives steering by passion, caution, will, calling, belief, and love? And aren’t the others, those trapped by history and caged by normalization, like lemmings over the cliffs of their own lives?

………

I know I can find out. I can uncover the broken pieces of my inner world and make a mural such as the world has never seen. I feel the sparks of that potential future falling back through time.

There is a time to hold on, and a time to let go, and though the waves are wrecking further the shattered pieces of what I thought I had, it is time to cast off and swim for it. Maybe I’ll ride a friendly shark to shore, or find a lighthouse beyond.

Insight into my stuckness: I’m caught in a moment where assertion isn’t a seeming option, where my own needs are denied. Its a waiting pattern in that though I do not consciously know what I’m waiting for, wishing, hoping will come to pass, I remain entangled in early relationships, keeping proximity in exchange for knowledge. Perhaps I think that if I just wait long enough I will be noticed, accepted, seen, loved?

I realized this after feeling great relief at some approval thrown my way by one of my primary objects. I didn’t think I cared, but the feeling was real. The horse and rider are switching places and I’m now willing to really listen to the horse and adjust the rider.

If the unconscious has deep channels of need, its the rider’s job to address these, not pretend they don’t exist. This is like a horse that needs soothing, food, water, combing, shodding, etc.. Ignore those things at your peril, as both horse and rider depend on the horse, whereas only the rider depends on the rider. IE, the horse comes first.

It is difficult knowing that I’m stuck in a longterm pattern but being unable to understand it or address it. That is part of the pattern of course….

So I have a couple of dreams that need writing down. Unusually, they have stuck in the craw of my mind since waking with them yesterday. “good” dreams usually fade fairly quickly, but I was somewhat sick yesterday so perhaps the dream-state was closer and more able to continue reminding me of goings-on in the underworld of me, the unconscious.

There was a girlfriend dream, a moving into a house dream, and one longer dream earlier in the week with my whole family on a hillside. Somewhere there is a fourth dream, but it has finally slipped away.

The girlfriend dream was about tenderness, friendship, and intimacy. And it lead to the house dream. She has dark medium-length hair, is fairly short, rides an old bicycle (like the kind you find on college campuses such as Oberlin), wears boyish clothes, but has an undeniable femininity. We are leaving a Frisbee party and making plans for later. It is late afternoon in autumn, but it is really warm. As I come outside and see her sitting next to her bike…on the ground, or on a short bench of some kind, I run over and smother her in an embrace, which gets us both laughing. She’s tying her shoes and I tell her that I love her and that she is amazing. She’s been herself again, and won my heart again. There is a moment where we lock eyes and know the depth of joy we find together.

….

Later, I’m moving into this house that I’ve been moving into for months, in the dream world. Each time its fairly boring because there is really nobody there, or there are roommates that seem strange and distant. But this time, as I moved in I realized that I really liked my roommates. We’re having a party on the night I move in.

I’m exploring my suite. Its actually rather huge. First floor, left side as you enter the deceptively large house from the street. The front room of my suite seemed at first like all there was. But its only a parlor. Through curtains, bathroom on the outside wall, small hallway, then the second ‘parlor’, with a really nice desk and computer setup, comfy couches, tapestries and artwork everywhere. I realize that these things are mine, but don’t remember decorating, let alone owning these things. As I continue back through the suite I see it splits off. On the right is a private hallway with a private staircase up to a second floor room and back-of-house-second-floor-deck. On the left is a massive livingroom / bedroom.

My hammered dulcimer is already setup. I dimly remember setting it up earlier, but I had not appreciated how great a house this was then. I’m happy. I hear people in the rest of the house laughing and realize that they are my friends and that we’re going to have several great years here together as a family of sorts. A family of choice rather than accident of birth.

I test out the dulcimer, playing a few licks with the padded side of the ornate but comfy hammers. It seems the old tunes are coming to me easily. A few missed notes, but mostly right on target. I try a few flams and arpeggios, and then a chord progression comes to mind. I hammer it out. I like it. I do it again with variations. I find a melody. Its very much a rhythmic, driven, rock song of sorts. I start really wailing on the dulcimer and loving it. Josh Jones / John Smith comes in and turns on the amplifier after catching my eye. I agree: This would be cool to blast around the house.

I’m rocking out, knowing that I’ll soon have an audience and get some dancing going. Where did this improve talent come from? I think its from joy. Its from feeling at home, finally.

And this is all a Very Good Thing as far as my real life goes. I wake up.

…….

I hike with my brother. We meet our family on a steep hillside by a river. We explain that we have to keep going to get to the good parts of the river and park. The family tries to say: “No, this is it!”. We say our goodbyes and Tom shows me that the path goes away from the river and up the hill, to bypass some cliffs. I know that we’ll come back to the river soon, and I’m not too sad about having to leave the parents and other siblings behind. They would never be able to go further downstream, and its time to accept that.

……

The other day I was at a Rite Aid, buying toiletries. As I entered I saw a middle-aged woman with pretty long brown hair. Some gray hairs in there, but something about her seemed young, from the back. She turned around and stared at me with the widest-eyed expression I’ve seen short of terror. Her eyes were probably blue, but what I really noticed was some light grey sheen over her whole face, more of an impression or aura than anything real. I smiled. She kept her expression and passed me.

I found my razor blades and soap and such and came to the checkout, where she was talking with the cashier about how she wanted extra bags to bag up her purchases, which were: 4 matching hideous green-yellow-swirled goblets, like the kind you serve iced tea in in the south. 4 matching hideous plastic plates that only sort-of matched the goblets. A plastic complicated pump-spray toy of some kind in the usual cheap-toy packaging.

Apparently she wanted each plastic goblet in its own bag so that they wouldn’t bump and scratch each other. It was fine, and the cashier understood, and I was in no hurry, but she suggested she do the rewrap herself so he could ring my purchases up. Fine.

It was then that I noticed that her red leather pocketbook, on the counter, was greasily stained and worn from many years of use. It was of a 70’s style. Her purse was also old. Mid-eighties brown leather with big faux gold loops joining the strap to the bag, which had an almost patch-work leather look to it. I never notice these things, but this woman was interesting.

The old items and new plastic purchases together, her care over the plastic, but slight personal disarray. These things told me something about her that I could relate with personally. I didn’t feel I was projecting, and still don’t. She’s stuck in a half-finished psychological house. She’s probably 42 or so, but lives in a world that was defined when she was 8, 14, and 22. No relationships have impacted her development since those times. She’s terrified, but has a few strong comforts. She’s somebody’s crazy aunt, but to me she’s a sister in a world that has brought lonely traumas early enough to disrupt full maturation of the personality.

Not that normal people are mature. But there is something I share with this 70s woman that is tragic. A quashed soul that is ever tethered to the past, a past where love was misshapen and trust destroyed such that it holds us in those long-ago moments and so rarely lets us come to the present without the elastic of poorly shaped but strong early impressions (universalizations, normalizations, trauma).

………

Other events in another post. I’m moooooooving on.