Anger and its healing salve for heartbreak

If I could tell you how many times I’ve let blood curdling screams evacuate the horror echoing in my bones from this recent trauma and its predecessors that seem to glom together in one giant pile of metamorphic goo I would.

But I’ve lost count. 

I don’t tell this for shock or to play victim, I tell you because it’s the ugly parts of #griefwork and I’ve made it a regular part of my #somatic practices for healing the hurts.

I scarcely even blink about it nowadays until someone mentions how uncomfortable they are doing it and how they judge themselves or feel like a #psycho. My 1:1s send me videos of people posting themselves doing it because it’s what we discuss and do in sessions sometimes.

I remember not too long ago when I was so uncomfortable with the sound of my own breath let alone emotions and screams so I get the need to normalize this process as you hopefully can see that through my words here, but you will never catch me filming it unless I teach a course on it in the future.

There’s something I find irreverent in exposing something sacred like trauma work. Plus, in the midst of an organic eruption of pain the last thing imma do is f@cking set my camera up - are you kidding me smh… anywhooooo… to each their own because I’m 1000 percent aware that me typing what for most feels like intimate details about my process, pain, grief, experience and opinions of my recent breakup could feel like a similar violation of sacredness and I can honor that we each have our levels of safety within vulnerability.

The trick is can we communicate those levels effectively or do we become resentful and sabotage relationship because “they don’t work” - do they not work or are you not working them?

“It works if you work it cuz you’re worth it”.  Is a fun chant from #recovery circles #aa

I believed we were.

He was not convinced.

In my head we had barely begun.  In his head we’d tried nearly everything.  The difference in our definitions was often astonishing.  Communication needed so much work but there was - conveniently for him and most emotionally unavailable people - little time and energy for it.

He’s not a “bad guy” for NOT believing in us, he might be “the good guy” for not believing, who knows #zenfarmer but he DID hurt me, I am harmed by him, upended, derailed, hardcore, because of his action/inaction, as well as my own and today those things get to coexist.

Today I get to speak about them, in a kind but honest way, regardless of who’s uncomfortable, because there was a time I would’ve never said a peep in order to protect the other person’s image (and mine for seeming weak in my over tolerant nature) and keep them from harm which in turn kept me from harm which is a pattern I learned in order to survive my childhood, to be liked, loved, safe, and today I’m unlearning that. #healingabandonment

Too many times I crouched in corners with silent screams that nearly exploded me and this written expression along with every enraged howl in my car on the freeways as I process a lifelong thread of betrayals small and large, (to myself from others, and to myself from myself) is an excavating amends to the decades of suffocated injustices incurred to me as well as every person out there feeling it too.

I try not to take the fact that we were - in his own words “not worth the investment” - personally to MY worth, but in the end, to him, I’m not.

In the end, to me, he was.

We were.

That’s my part.

I am “willing to go to any lengths’ and I see THAT seemingly good trait was mind-bogglingly a character flaw.  Even though there was a time in my life that I lacked that willingness in some areas, like the willingness to save my own life from a drug addiction and “soul-mate” I had lost all ability to manage, I see how yet again the pendulums swing and the fractal of a pattern morphs but somehow stays the same.

I was willing to risk so much depth for those who aren’t at the same level of willingness, or depth + purpose, direction, and faith that I am.

To be fearless in the face of our trauma and wounds together.

It’s not even a “character flaw” until it gets out of balance - and in this relationship that was NOT out of balance within me but it was between us. AND my not speaking up and/or knowing more clearly that saying things like “I realize you didn’t mean to hurt me, AND you still did AND i need you to own it, apologize, and make amends” was an essential component for me that I hadn’t integrated because I wanted to be emotionally independent and not feel weak or needy (expose my vulnerability) at being hurt by another’s behaviors

AND it ended up in part causing the divide.

I needed more of what he had and/or he me.  In many ways we were each other’s medicine. Together and in parting.

He was willing.

1/2 the time.

Which is why it worked some of the time and I was willing to keep working it but not at the level I was over functioning, carrying the other half of his will & emotional responsibility for both of us.

And when I finally stopped doing the emotional labor it was too much for him.  He wasn’t capable, ready, or willing.

Or sure about his commitment or what he wanted in a partnership at all.

I was so excited to have those convos. To cross those bridges.  To find out what love was for each of us and

continue growing together.

He was not.

1/2 measures availed us nothing.

I see my flaw in being so strong.  My strength teaches people how to treat me by saying that I don’t need much, and in the beginning I didn’t, but as we grew, as I healed, I balanced the strength with truth and softness, it shifted, as things do, and when it noticed it, I spoke up hoping you would meet me.  That it, we, I, would be worth it.  You didn’t think a relationship should require such things. You thought it should’ve been easier.  And maybe youre right, at least I’m clear it should be easier for me.  And maybe you’ll find someone who will be ok with a more basic connection …or disconnection. 

I was at first.

Today I have a new boundary and requirement for relationships.

100 willingness to transform together will be key.

I heard it while listening to my anger, its scream yesterday that exploded from my core as I drove down the PNW mountain pass “I can’t believe you didn’t want to grow with me”. It reverberated past the windows into the trees shrouding the highways in safety and catching my words as I turned my rage back to myself, it showed me my values, my edges and pointed the way.

And now I gratefully walk my anger and pain back home as one more thread of my disconnected integrity and self worth gets woven back into love.

Side note: there IS a difference between “sticking up for yourself” vs “being mean” because I actually see a lot of people confuse “sticking up for themselves” with attacking another person instead of simply stating the truth of how they’re feeling or facts of the experience. It’s a line I’ve been walking a lot lately because harms were done, accountability was not owned for them, and I’m being told I’m treating the other unfairly by announcing it -defamation of character- when actually what defamed their character was their poor behavior and treatment of me as well as their stunted attempt to apologize with no amended behavior offered.

A whole other topic for another post I’m sure but worth noting here.