What is this sensation that is happening now? I talked it over with my therapist and she imparted that this is the feeling that settles like a residue over complex trauma. I suppose it’s possible it’s happening to others, perhaps even to you. After all, the bells that play when the culture is in trouble are ringing.
I will describe it this way: It seems I’m waning like the moon, I’m falling behind in the races, I’m leaving the front door open when it should be closed.
I cannot help but notice the expanse before me is utterly chaotic. The view contains colors ad infinitum rising from the air, coming in from the sides, falling to earth from the sky – everywhere is imagery of something that cannot be real. And, I hear an assembly of sounds impossibly low and wide. Where am I?
Have I disconnected from myself, have I entered into another lifetime? A lifetime embarked upon now at the age of 50, the next channel of an existence spent paddling from one lake to the next, waterways of experience (there has been fear, and worry. There has been love, hope, feelings of low affect, shock, endurance, love again, partnership, and this dreadful, dreadful anxiety that permeates everything, especially these days).
The separation of bodily reality from what we have always believed to be real has examples in every direction. Have you any experience with these certain phenomena?
- One gazes in the mirror, minutes go by. After some time, one may begin to feel a strange non-recognition.
- Another example: one is startled at the sound of one’s recorded voice and asks, “do I really sound that way?”
- One looks at a typed word long enough that it becomes impossible to know if it is spelled correctly.
(“Come back to me,” I tell myself.)
There has to be a way to span this void. There has to be some way to connect within myself, to have peace, for the colors to stop being over-saturated and instead be the filter I look through with a calmed spirit. The way, I know, must be created in me. I resolve to find it. The first step will be self-compassion, empathy for self.
Will the second step please reveal itself?
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mary june brown 