Wow I've been here in Vic for like over a month now, 5ish
weeks..
I was first dreaming about an old friend and I was climbing up
an awkward rocky bank with all kinds of obstacles and platforms
and added bits of brick. I’m in one of my hometowns and I’m
being asked to fetch something for my friends and I’m crawling
up the wall and trying to grab onto the rock face so I can pull
myself up but everything keeps pulling off of the wall and it’s
dangerous and crumbling. My two girlfriends I’m with are quite
apathetic and a bit demanding and bitchy. I feel like a little
lackey, as I have at times in the past when I’m friends with
more alpha type women. I think the meaning of this dream is
pretty obvious: old relationships are falling apart and there’s
nothing to hold on to. I’m getting used. It’s time to let go and
move on and stop trying to scale walls for people.
Then I was dreaming about Petunia and the Vipers and they were
playing in a small bar. I was being all coy in the back of the
venue and pretending not to be staring at Petunia too much but
inside I'm actually swooning over him. He doesn’t seem to notice
me at all and then he’s doing some kind of social media thing
with his kids and he’s talking about how he saw a flying
squirrel at Stanley Park and how cool it was. Then he’s gone and
I’m there alone and I'm looking at the concert listings and I'm
going to miss Petunia’s next show but Bikini Kill is playing and
I can make it to that one. The meaning of this might be that
it’s time to move on from idolizing unattainable men, get into
some 90’s riot grrl music!
I’ve been a bit numb for the past while, and maybe now I’m
starting to thaw out and realize that I have desires and
relationship needs, however much I’m trying to avoid that right
now. I was trying to get behind the scenes jobs, yet both places
I got hired at ended up putting me in the front of the house. So
I’ll be very social in the coming months and I’m sure I’ll meet
a lot of people. It’s pretty cool at my one job seeing so many
interesting customers with tattoos, wild hair and cool hipster
clothes after living in a cultural dead zone for the past couple
of years. And I suppose I fit right in. I’ve never done so much
front of house before and it’s freaking me out a bit but I’m
going with the flow and my co-workers are all mostly nerdy
empaths like myself. I feel self-conscious about my age
sometimes but the more I learn about myself and neurodiversity
and trauma, the kinder I’m being to myself about not being able
to develop much socially and emotionally. I just wasn’t able to
do so when I was younger and I put most of my energy into
spiritual and intellectual growth. Now I’m catching up on how to
relate to people socially and be emotionally balanced and open.
I’m also learning how to regulate my energetic body when around
others and not to let in too much of other people’s vibes, yet
also not shut down completely as I used to when I was younger.
Also, most of the young people who I’m working with are
exceptionally mature, and I’m happy to learn from them.
I’m up at the ass crack of dawn here and it looks like I’ll be
able to make it to an early morning yoga class no problem. This
town is very windy and I find it really refreshing and
purifying. I’m closer to the big ocean and everything feels more
shifty and wide open.
***
I have this writing friends Gilles and he suggested to me a
couple of years ago that I start writing every morning. It
seemed like an impossibility at the time given how chaotic my
life was – yet I’ve started to do that now and it feels great.
Not having the internet is helping that a lot. I used to wake up
and read the news; now I write out my dreams, listen to the
birds, look out at the sky and drink hot dandelion drink.
***
Early last year when I realized that the relationship I was in
was dissolving and my heart felt deeply broken, I started to
soothe myself energetically when I was going to sleep or anytime
I felt emotionally distraught or super anxious. I realized that
I was often feeling a kind of grand and enduring separation
anxiety from wanting to connect with others and have a partner
but not being able to, and then having so many of my
relationships crumble apart. It got to where I didn’t want
anyone around me and I really just wanted to be alone. Though I
also really wanted someone there. I was torn. And that’s how I
felt when I got to this new town. I was feeling really anxious
being alone at first and I didn’t have my friend Ezmeralda here
anymore.
These past few weeks I’ve been remembering to energetically
soothe myself, as I often wake up in the middle of the night and
feel a deep sinking anxiety or go through some grieving. I’m
able to breath into the pits of my soul and calm myself better
than I used.
I think a big part of healing myself has come from learning
breath work. I had been doing yoga for almost 10 years but when
I started doing deep breath work, it changed everything. Now my
yoga practice is way better as well. I think I avoided breath
work for a long time because it sounded boring to me and I
wanted to be moving my body, but actually it’s been really
incredible and deeply healing on so many levels. Now I just
breath better in general. I also really like some of the Tibetan
Yoga that involves breath work and simple movements combined
while in a seated posture.
I think that a lot of us with hyper tuned nervous systems have a
tendency to dissociate from our bodies in order to cope with the
colossal amount of energy that we’re taking in, but I’m
realizing that it doesn’t stop the flow of energy – the energy
just builds up and gets stuck and then manifests in physical and
mental health issues. These days I find that I’m better able to
stay grounded and let the energy that comes into my body move
through me and I’m not as affected by other's energy as I used
to be. I think this process is also strengthened by my decision
to self partner and shift my focus away from caring so much
about connecting with others and instead focus on connecting
deeply with myself. And when I do come across someone with a
strong personality that I might have conceded to in the past I
start breathing slowly and deeply into my belly and imagining a
protective blanket of energy wrapping around me and keeping me
safe.
The other thing I’m doing is disconnecting from people in my
life who aren’t healthy. I still have some old attachments
lingering in my energetic body and it’s hard to let them go
because there's so much shared history there or because I'm
sentimental and there are things I really like about some of the
people that have been in my life. But in the big picture, I've
let myself get used a lot and had some people around me who put
me down and weren't true friends. It’s extra complex because I
feel a sense of duty to be there for certain people who are
marginalized, yet I’m realizing that I’m often enabling people
and feeding their egos. Sometimes people need to hit rock bottom
before they’re forced to make big transformations, and “helping”
a person can sometimes hinder them from much needed personal
growth.
I guess I’m a classic case of a “co-dependent” in many ways,
which makes sense given that I grew up in an alcoholic home and
was the older child that took on a lot of responsibilities. I
also still feel fucked up about not being there more for friends
who have taken their lives or overdosed so I’m sometimes hyper
vigilant and over-bearing in my assistance of others in fear
that something terrible might happen if I don’t give them the
support that they need.
If someone is genuinely in need I will always be there, I know
that’s part of my life path. I’m learning how to do that while
keeping myself energetically safe and allowing others to do
their own healing. I’m also human and I can’t expect that I’ll
always do everything perfectly, and sometimes people will die
and there’s nothing I can do about it if that’s their choice. It
fucking sucks. It’s something I’ve being forced to come to terms
with this year as here have been so many deaths in such a short
period of time.
Yet nothing compares to what people on the street and so many
Indigenous communities are dealing with right now. Can you
imagine losing multiple loved ones in one week? How an we give
these communities the support and love that they need in order
to heal? So far most of the reconciliation efforts made by the
governing bodies of these lands seem very superficial and
tokenized..