Silhouettes of Time

I think most people are planning to restore their central nervous system. I am sure a provider gave them a diagnosis, some information, I am sure they had family support, friend support or structure. I could be wrong and likely am eliminating other stories with just those few words, that's how quick erasure happens.

I am likely in my feels over my own perspective, and experience. Unplanned, unaware, and steam rolled. It was a full collapse of external events and pressures, compounded with little relief. That's my life since the beginning born into separation immediately unbonded and unloved. That is when the nervous system syncs to misalignment, distortion. Every moment after that is controlled by a hijacking unbeknownst to the individual.

That is your experience, it is all you know and it feels wrong, so you think you are wrong, for reasons unknown which begins a shame cycle, and to avoid shame the easiest thing to do is form an identity and be good at it, which I wasn't or stay busy producing, which I could and did.

I got a formal education in Exercise and Health Sciences, worked with a therapist weekly and twice a week sometimes with emergency calls for a dedicated 15 years. I worked multiple jobs consecutively serving my community, food service, health service, youth fitness, women's wellness, Alanon, and supporting those is AA/NA. I went to multiple fitness classes a week, I went to yoga 6 days a week for nearly two years with no concept of how I would stay financially afloat. I did 300 crunches a night before bed or I couldn't sleep. I lent people rent money and never had anyone to ask when I needed something. I was their ride, their therapist, their maid, and their collateral damage when I demanded reciprocity and honest alignment.

I was forced into urgent moves over 15 times, losing more of my hard-earned belongings each time. I left work to go to wakes for my friends, for my family. I returned to work the next day in silence and compounded grief being talked badly about by nearly everyone there. They couldn't complain about the quality of my work so they tore down everything else about me they could, and I took it because they paycheck was survival. I worked at restaurants where I had to let unsanitary management humble me because the financial goal was all that mattered. My home got shot, I was forced to live in a multi-generational abuse system for an extended period after that. A 24 drive with my sick cats to the flea infested shotgun in New Orleans, to be pushed out by Ida, and then the very long confusing collapse in Alabama.

Alabama, where I bought my home. The one that I couldn't be thrown out from, the one I could paint, and my cats had space. My safety, my security, my foundation. The one I never had because no one deemed me worthy. It was mine finally.

Or was it?

Because I let a friend in, and in both our ignorance I bared his energetic and emotional load. While my cats became sick, and caretaking became a constant cycle of panic, poor medical help, trauma, research, intravenous water treatments, various medications, pills, syringes, begging and pleading with the universe, succumbing to keening, which I also identified as I thought I was surely losing my mind.

The creations gave way under the caretaking. The movement becomes too much for their sick bodies, I stilled mine. The only support felt like a layer of burden atop what was already insurmountable. The famine followed, the fatigue, no relief, the panicked sweating spells that lasted hours for a year. The silence of no conversation.

The half-painted walls, with shadow silhouettes of the life I thought we would birth.

Where I was met with death and demise, left alone under wandering skies.

Although the sanctity of this space is ingrained in me, as I am bound to this land by burial. It doesn't feel like home, or maybe just not right now. It feels empty with potential. And I feel like the form of me that died here is clear enough now, to maybe try here or there.

So, we move again, but this time by choice, not force and maybe we will even call in aligned support.