I have been avalanched.
The past has stormed all my barricades like some mighty tsunami, sweeping me off my feet and leaving me flailing and helpless seeming.
I have been pulled down by it's undertow, fingers peeled from their grasp on the present, and hurled back onto the shore of my childhood, breathless and choking.
After all the work I have done I had thought these things dealt with, believed myself able to sail above them now, secure in the present, and moving forward. Not a lie, but not the truth either, it would seem.
I have a friend - HAD a friend - someone I loved dearly , and felt secure in their regard, happy in their presence. But what I really had was an opportunity, a gift, another chance at redemption from the past, disguised as a warm and welcoming then cold and condemning woman.
Her regard for me vanished a year ago, it seems, but she disguised this for many months, trying to cool things off but not knowing how. Icy comments leaked out from her frustrated resentment, until finally things came to a head, and the whole list of my transgressions came pouring out.
The shock was immense, the sense of betrayal, shattering, and the feeling of loss, palpable.
But this was not the thing.
The past had roared up from its proper place and engulfed me. There I was, back home, six, seven, eight years old, listening to Mum rant at me. Her words as inaccurate a description of the truth of me as me ex friend's. In later years, her version of me so honed from repeated practice that I was all but invisible, the consequences to my imagined crimes now included physical violence on top of the daily sneering, belittling and blaming for every negative emotion she experienced.
After the deluge, I avoided my ex friend for as long as I could - why, after all, would I want to put myself back into that situation, willingly go through all that again? I had progressed far enough from my childhood self to know, finally, that I was worth more. And besides, she had clearly stated she wanted nothing more to do with me.
But avoidance is a fear-based fiend, however, and keeps you victim to the past. So, No. Not for me, not any more. I cannot exorcise past demons by ignoring them, and I cannot move on, unencumbered by unhealed experiences, without facing them head-on.
So I have seen her twice since then, encouraged and supported by real friends, and it has been excruciating both times. And this is OK, because I recognise that it will take time for me to learn how to deal with people like that without disintegrating inside. I am strong. This can be done.
And then - the second wave.
My husband Steve, surely my greatest teacher, produces another opportunity-rich experience, and more past turbulence seeps over and beneath me. My balance lost, I crumble.
The sorrow of unknown memory rips out from my heart and cascades down my cheeks. The pain still buried in my DNA, passed cell to cell with each renewal, surfaces, my body acting in unison with my heart, but my mind flounders.
I catch it, pull it up, expose it.
And there it is.
I am five and I still need my mother, but she is gone now. She no longer sees me. She no longer likes me. I am the 'bad girl'. I am not her Bev. I am allowed no mistakes, no chances to learn. Now everything I do has to be perfect first time. And even when it is, she doesn't see, finding instead something else to criticise me for, finding fault with me to explain the way she feels inside.
I never sit on her lap again. I am never held by her. When I fall and cry I encounter impatience at my clumsiness. There are no kind words. Waking in the night from a bad dream, I see her standing furious in the doorway, arms folded, ready to shout. I am five. I still need my mother but she is gone and she never comes back.
There was no reconciliation at her deathbed, no apology for the past. No explanation or chance of understanding and forgiveness. Her feelings towards me endured to the end.
And so I have no faith that love lost, diminished, diverted, or derailed will come back. Coldness and distance are self-propagating in the world of my past, and I have no belief in my ability to evoke anything else.
Poor Steve. What a burden to carry.
I let the tears fall, the pain be acknowledged, the un-met need at last given voice. I hug my five year old self. I am a mother myself now. I know how to love. I can love myself in her place.
My sorrow becomes compassion and finally the flood waters begin to retreat, my tears having strangely cancelled them out, and the present is almost back in line with clock and calender.
There is still more work to do, more loss to be acknowledged and let go of, more understanding to be reached, but there is time for all of that.
They say the past is another country, somewhere we visit from time to time, but I am not so sure.
I once tripped on a stone and ripped out my big toenail. It took nine months to grow back. If I touch my toenail just there, at the tip, I am touching last July. My hair is two years old at the ends, and parts of my bone are now nearly seven years old.
The past is in every cell of my body. It is part of every part of me.
I cannot escape it, nor do I want to try. I can choose whether to carry it as a burden, weighing me down and limiting my present, or see it as the atoms of my life-blood, an integral part of my identity, a rich, pulsing experience that can carry me forward on its tide.
I choose freedom, I choose healing, I choose growth, I choose life.
The past has stormed all my barricades like some mighty tsunami, sweeping me off my feet and leaving me flailing and helpless seeming.
I have been pulled down by it's undertow, fingers peeled from their grasp on the present, and hurled back onto the shore of my childhood, breathless and choking.
After all the work I have done I had thought these things dealt with, believed myself able to sail above them now, secure in the present, and moving forward. Not a lie, but not the truth either, it would seem.
I have a friend - HAD a friend - someone I loved dearly , and felt secure in their regard, happy in their presence. But what I really had was an opportunity, a gift, another chance at redemption from the past, disguised as a warm and welcoming then cold and condemning woman.
Her regard for me vanished a year ago, it seems, but she disguised this for many months, trying to cool things off but not knowing how. Icy comments leaked out from her frustrated resentment, until finally things came to a head, and the whole list of my transgressions came pouring out.
The shock was immense, the sense of betrayal, shattering, and the feeling of loss, palpable.
But this was not the thing.
The past had roared up from its proper place and engulfed me. There I was, back home, six, seven, eight years old, listening to Mum rant at me. Her words as inaccurate a description of the truth of me as me ex friend's. In later years, her version of me so honed from repeated practice that I was all but invisible, the consequences to my imagined crimes now included physical violence on top of the daily sneering, belittling and blaming for every negative emotion she experienced.
After the deluge, I avoided my ex friend for as long as I could - why, after all, would I want to put myself back into that situation, willingly go through all that again? I had progressed far enough from my childhood self to know, finally, that I was worth more. And besides, she had clearly stated she wanted nothing more to do with me.
But avoidance is a fear-based fiend, however, and keeps you victim to the past. So, No. Not for me, not any more. I cannot exorcise past demons by ignoring them, and I cannot move on, unencumbered by unhealed experiences, without facing them head-on.
So I have seen her twice since then, encouraged and supported by real friends, and it has been excruciating both times. And this is OK, because I recognise that it will take time for me to learn how to deal with people like that without disintegrating inside. I am strong. This can be done.
And then - the second wave.
My husband Steve, surely my greatest teacher, produces another opportunity-rich experience, and more past turbulence seeps over and beneath me. My balance lost, I crumble.
The sorrow of unknown memory rips out from my heart and cascades down my cheeks. The pain still buried in my DNA, passed cell to cell with each renewal, surfaces, my body acting in unison with my heart, but my mind flounders.
I catch it, pull it up, expose it.
And there it is.
I am five and I still need my mother, but she is gone now. She no longer sees me. She no longer likes me. I am the 'bad girl'. I am not her Bev. I am allowed no mistakes, no chances to learn. Now everything I do has to be perfect first time. And even when it is, she doesn't see, finding instead something else to criticise me for, finding fault with me to explain the way she feels inside.
I never sit on her lap again. I am never held by her. When I fall and cry I encounter impatience at my clumsiness. There are no kind words. Waking in the night from a bad dream, I see her standing furious in the doorway, arms folded, ready to shout. I am five. I still need my mother but she is gone and she never comes back.
There was no reconciliation at her deathbed, no apology for the past. No explanation or chance of understanding and forgiveness. Her feelings towards me endured to the end.
And so I have no faith that love lost, diminished, diverted, or derailed will come back. Coldness and distance are self-propagating in the world of my past, and I have no belief in my ability to evoke anything else.
Poor Steve. What a burden to carry.
I let the tears fall, the pain be acknowledged, the un-met need at last given voice. I hug my five year old self. I am a mother myself now. I know how to love. I can love myself in her place.
My sorrow becomes compassion and finally the flood waters begin to retreat, my tears having strangely cancelled them out, and the present is almost back in line with clock and calender.
There is still more work to do, more loss to be acknowledged and let go of, more understanding to be reached, but there is time for all of that.
They say the past is another country, somewhere we visit from time to time, but I am not so sure.
I once tripped on a stone and ripped out my big toenail. It took nine months to grow back. If I touch my toenail just there, at the tip, I am touching last July. My hair is two years old at the ends, and parts of my bone are now nearly seven years old.
The past is in every cell of my body. It is part of every part of me.
I cannot escape it, nor do I want to try. I can choose whether to carry it as a burden, weighing me down and limiting my present, or see it as the atoms of my life-blood, an integral part of my identity, a rich, pulsing experience that can carry me forward on its tide.
I choose freedom, I choose healing, I choose growth, I choose life.
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