Letting Go

In the last three months I’ve tried to rebuild my life and marriage in a more positive way.

Lots of Zen thoughts and breathing and letting go of the past. Nights of long reflection, and a slow realisation of who I am, who she is, and what makes us both tick.

Despite it all, it’s still very easy for an innocent word or action to mean that history moves, in one fell swoop, from a barely suppressed memory to a slideshow of faces right behind my eyelids.

Anger chasing sleep away, pushing a deep, involuntary breath of rage out of my chest.

Letting go of the past is a process… and I have the feeling I’m still on step one.

Heart Like Train

I saw this the other day, and thought it was great, so have reposted here… Of course, I prefer the bad girls any day over the nice girls, lol

———

I’m caressing her, very softly. ‘So, am I a thing?’ she asks. ‘Ugh,’ I say. I’ve found a small dimple on one shoulder, above the armpit, soft, with no bone beneath, like the dimples in cheeks. I speak with my lips in the dimple. ‘Shoulder like cheek,’ I say. It’s incomprehensible. ‘What?’ she asks. But she doesn’t care in the last what I say to her. ‘Race like June,’ I say, still in the dimple. She doesn’t understand what I’m doing, but she likes it and laughs. She’s a nice girl. ‘Sea like arrival,’ I say, then take my mouth from her dimple and put my ear there to listen to the echo. All I hear is her breathing and, far away, her heart. ‘Heart like train,’ I say.

— Italo Calvino, “Love Far from Home,” Numbers in the Dark

Why Do You Write?

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

-Tennessee Williams, 1955

———–

Me… well I’m a bit of a mixed bag on this front.

I started writing this blog mainly so that I can start exploring a side to me that I’ve suppressed my entire adult life.

But there is definitely also an element of Tennessee Williams happening for me - I have used my blog to work through some pretty unpleasant revelations in my relationship with my wife. Reasonably successfully too so far, I might add.

Funnily enough, I’ve been finding I’m more driven to blog when I’m feeling extremes of emotion, rather than when I feel all is just cruising along nicely.

In fact, I’ve been tempted to rename my blog The Emotional Oscillator in honour of my new need to document my emotional extremes online.

And to be honest, more often than not in recent times, I’ve been dumping all my negative feelings online in my blog posts.

Maybe it’s that old saying - misery loves company, lol.

The Deeper You Fall

I know it hurts
all the pain
rips your heart apart
But I’m here
I’ll hold you
shelter you from the wind
I can make it stop
raining on your soul.
Look into my heart
there the sun glows
I’ll open up for you
I’ll let you in
just try
test it
touch on the surface
and submerge yourself
in my love
I promise you
the deeper you fall
the tighter I’ll hold.
I’ll fill the holes you’ve
drilled
if only you’ll throw
your drill away.
- Jill Newman

The Paradox of Trust

“We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy”
- Walter Anderson

Trust, Revisited

Fuck, even I am getting tired of my ongoing struggle to resolve my trust issues with my wife.

A much smarter person than me made a good point this morning when I was discussing this with her.

The advice she gave me was along the lines that I should never expect to control anything (or anyone) but myself and my own behaviour and actions.

I can’t try and place limits on my wife and her behaviour as some way of compensating for my own fears and insecurities about our relationship.

Because at the end of the day, no matter what limits I might try and impose, opportunity exists everywhere in our daily lives for both of us to seek out other connections if we desire, whether that’s in the workplace, through daycare or school communities, or online through places like ALT.

And therein lies the paradox of trust.

In order to move forward, I need to focus on myself first, and the relationship I have with my wife, and the connection that I have with her, as these are the only things that I CAN have an influence over.

If I do that, instead of dwelling constantly on things over which I have no control, then everything else will fall into place.

And if doesn’t, well then, that’s the nature of love I guess.

You need to put yourself out there knowing that nothing is guaranteed and you may still fall flat on your face despite everything.

It’s a big call to make, given the pain and mistakes of the past.

But least I will have tried.

And the possible rewards are so great, I’d be a fool not to.

And if the worst does happen, then I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and life will carry on.

C’est la vie.

I can do this.

I can.

I can.

Take the leap.

A Scanner Darkly

What does a scanner see?
Into the head?
Down into the heart?
Does it see into me?
Into us?
Clearly or darkly?
I hope it sees clearly because I can’t any longer see into myself.
I see only murk.
I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better,
because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do,
then I’m cursed and cursed again.

Trust, A Requiem

Trust.
Such a simple word.
Can I trust you?
Can you trust me?
The remnants of our trust lie all around me like shards of shattered glass.
Cold and brilliant,
They cut into my soul like a blade
And the blood drips black red through my fingers,
My essence seeping from the wound,
Glistening in the darkness.

Urawaza.
And so the secret tricks continue,
On both sides,
Despite the hollow ring of our dead voices claiming otherwise.
And the gulf between us, which was narrowing, widens again.
My heart grows cold,
My soul fades in the pale twilight of our connection,
And the blood drips black red through my fingers.

Now, in the dark world where I dwell,
Ugly things,
And surprising things,
And sometimes little wondrous things,
Spill out in me constantly,
And I can count on nothing.

Fear Is The Little-Death

The Litany Against Fear is a fictional incantation spoken by characters in Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune, and its sequels, in order to focus their minds in times of peril. The Litany is as follows:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

This incantation originates from the Bene Gesserit. Paul Atreides, the son of Duke Leto Atreides, uses it when the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam compels him to put his right hand in a black box for the Death/Alternative test. The test uses extreme physical pain to produce evidence of his humanity. While doing so Mohiam holds a needle with deadly poison, known as the gom jabbar or “high-handed enemy,” to his neck. Paul must endure the agony as a demonstration of the strength of his mental willpower over his physical instincts.

The litany restores focus and relaxation to those who recite it. As calmness returns, Paul says “Get on with it, old woman.”

I too have been enduring a test of my own humanity over the past month, enduring emotional pain not physical; confronting my personal gom jabbar in the form of my wife’s declared soul connection with another Dom, my fear of her love for him held like a poison needle to my own neck.

And the agony of this has at times been unbearable; more painful and soul destroying than I ever thought possible, and the “high handed enemy” has come oh so very close to breaking me.

But it hasn’t and it won’t…

I will face my fear and where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

“Get on with it old woman.”

The True Test of Civilisation

“The true test of civilisation is not the census,
nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no,
but the kind of man the country turns out.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson