Trials and Tribulations........

I've often wondered what I'd find among the scattered memories of forgotten emotion.....times I'd lived watching, estimating value, and initiating action from below the realm of adolescence.....and still further......from adulthood.....the time when the view was from a "leg" perspective.  The few images memory held prevalent and made available when prompted by some emotional stimulus seemed to point toward the existence of some sort of 'special child'......at least that is what I was led to believe with statements made by my mother during the years. I personally could never associate any special feelings to her musing or to pictures I have from the early years. There were vague references to some sort of gregarious nature of fearlessness and curiosity......which were sprinkled......at times.....with words like selfish and statements regarding reminders of my father who was the classic "distant" parent. I heard a lot of condemning phrases such as "acting just like him" and "reminds me of". These probably encouraged me to focus forward rather than enjoy and absorb the present circumstances on a daily basis. I remember always wanting to be somewhere other than where I was. In the last forty years I exposed this as a 'self-evident truth' which began in my mother's lack of happiness and convoluted denials.

In the course of writing this blog I've mentioned instances of epiphany whereby I discovered many layers of my own resistance to life and attempted to offer the understandings of cultural inundation I've gleaned from this. This year is opening with an even greater potential for myself and some who stand very close to me to bring "lost fragments" of self back into view. I have been experiencing a rebirth of imagination through a relationship which is dawning between myself, Suzanne, and another. It is an unusual triad with a lack of social dogma such as jealousy....and the nuances it is configuring itself with are offering some very empowering attitude changes . For one thing........just prior to Christmas.......Suzanne found herself undergoing a purposeful awakening in a way which can be described only through a metaphor such as the blossoming of a lotus flower. Its like her ability to love turned a corner deep inside and is initiating something long held in check from early childhood. She was astounded.

I am experiencing the self-same. Long constricted feelings began surfacing in the month of September and a chain of epiphany reached a recognizeable level which has done nothing less than astound me.


The muse in all of this is our eight year friendship with a woman, her children, and her life.....interacting with our own..........which has been opening these doors of early childhood for each of us. She too.....has had an amazing epiphany about her self-worth in this relationship and a multitude of smaller ones which are starting to offer her substantial insights into her past, present and potentials for future. In finding ourselves as a support system in multiple ways as she changes her survival mode.....we are finding her the support or muse if you like....which 'cements' expanded ideas of love as 'energy extant' without the need classically associated to this idea........and  all three of us are experiencing a rebirth.

There was a time in my life when I began to sense a bitterness creeping into my 'heart' as I thought I was failing in my quest for self-realization. This was in and around my early 30s. I had an opportunity to change my relationship at the time but I chose to 're-set' my goal by setting my personal desire aside in favor of a bigger picture. I did not realize that the following 10 years would teach me so much about habitual self-abuse.....universally and personally. Those years changed a point of spiritual focus from a point of searching for an 'external answer'........to the reality that the answers lay in the 'trackable' psychology of my past.......my 'inside'. It could be said that halfway through my 4th level of growth...in 7 year cycles......a door had opened which began an ardent re-working of my first 3.5 cycles. This 'door' kept initiating a second look....each time stagnation threatened to create a perfect parallel of my dogmatic past attitudes. In my early 30s I was struggling with my 2nd marriage, trying to hold it together while my wife was doing her best to destroy it. Things were a mess. There was a longing inside to just let go of her and try to move forward but the words of an elder from my past kept 'ringing' in my ears that I must earn my way past my past......by comprehension.....or I would merely recreate the lesson again and again. I think.......in hindsight.......had I walked away at that point and taken the other road I'd have learned what I was reaching for but how can we know for certain. My adopted attitude from the near death experience at 25 was to become tenacious in my quest and refuse to give up until all 'avenues' were exhausted. It is that tenacity, inherited from my mother, which has kept the 'fire inside' burning brightly all these years in my search for self and the recalcitrant attitude I approach social dogma with.

Now....here is a couple of parallels for perusal. Suzanne went through a perfect contextual parallel in her early 30s. The threat of bitterness increased slowly over the next 10 years and only her meditations kept it at bay. Our friend is facing up to every aspect Suz and I went through,as I write, and knows it. The entrenched attitudes of her former partner are extremely similar to those of my father around the time my younger sister was about a year old .  It was in the next two years that I believe my mother fought with herself and my father over the issue of  his irresponsible selfishness.......and
finally gave up......slowly becoming the emotionally hardened self-righteous woman who raised us. During that period is when she talked about me changing from this wonder-filled loving child to this wild-seed hellion that I was. I have long looked for verification of these 'facts' but could not clarify them through my mother. As well.....many is the time in the last ten years I have made statements to Suzanne regarding a pet peeve to have met her when she was in her early 30s and the subsequent discussions of things having possibly gone a very different way. It is a tough 'row to hoe' when only one partner wants to dance the dance of life.......and the other is merely content to live vicariously.

This love of these many women past and current are the 'river' which lead me to awareness of what "love" really is by opening up my mind to memories I buried in layers...as we all do when learning to survive through our trials and tribulations.