I was doing this mindfulness exercise where you breathe into
a feeling, and open it up.
I had a brief memory of something shameful, a small dense
marble in the bottom of my stomach. I explored it and it grew larger, suddenly
I wondered if perhaps I was hungry. There was a weird pain there that I
couldn’t place, and ideas of previous shame experiences came to mind. Where do
I hold my shame? The bottom of my stomach continued to grow. I felt tension in
my lower back, then middle back, then the knot in my back where I had that
bronchial infection. The tightness and constriction of what feels like broken
ribs. The grating against each inhale. I returned my attention to my stomach,
reminded that this bubble is where I used to feel nausea, and there it was
again. That bubbling over nervousness that I experienced so often when I was
young. That worry, that things were not okay, and would not be ok. The
insecurity, the pain that remained, creeped up from my stomach through my back
and choked my heart. I got scared of the nausea, sudden images of the demons
revolting, clawing and maiming their way through my organs, -the eruption - I
couldn’t put back into place. I knew this feeling, I tried to breathe into it,
tell it that I was opening, but I felt the saliva pool around my gums, and was
reminded that this is how it felt so often. That hunger, that never-ending
insecurity that felt like I was always about to throw up, the emptiness, the
shame, the guilt and the unbearable hurt that continued to build until I prayed
there was nothing left, prayed for God to take me, to end me, and inevitably broke
down into tears, crumpled myself into a ball and wept. That defeat of
childhood. I didn’t this time, I stilled my stomach, and turned my mind
elsewhere, still too afraid that I couldn’t bear it.
A few minutes later, I was still feeling it. It is back to a
marble, only this time sitting just below my diaphragm. I asked myself what is
it I want in this moment, and immediately knew that I wanted someone to comfort
me. To take me into their arms and comfort me.
The mental image I have of myself is naked in blankets on
the mattress at my Mom’s house after Becky and I broke up. Completely vulnerable
and feeling incapable of even dressing myself to face the world.
I tell myself, you’ll have to learn to swaddle yourself, to
give yourself that comfort. But behind that I still wish I had someone else to
do it. I know I would want to do that for someone else, to take their
brokenness up and show them that they are safe, that the world hasn’t really
fallen apart, that their heart will mend and they are still worthy. In bits and
pieces, I’ve tried to do that for others almost every day of my life. But as I
told Courtney, I don’t think the loneliness and the hurt will go away until I
find a way to mend this hurt that seems so vacuous. I see it now, that black
hole, I can tell it is still there whirlpooling despite all my numbness, my
boundaries, my attempts at acceptance, my attempts to lash out. And all the
things I’ve tried to throw into it to close it up. From sugar, coffee, sex, porn,
violence, learning, escape, faith and friendship, work and amicability… and all
those good person traits. But it won’t really close up unless I recognize and
heal it.
Hehehe or maybe I actually am hungry.
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