[Disclaimer: this post contains a description of a panic sequence/trauma response. Don’t read this if you don’t feel up to it.]
In my mind, the categories line up in neat rows, with strong, hard walls between them. Like clean white boxes that each contain one single item - no more, no less. All of them distinctly separate from each other.
/
In my mind, no categories exist. Everything flows in and out of each other, or actually, everything IS each other. Just the “other side of the coin” in an endless loop where there is in fact no separate “coins” but just a mushy, golden goo.
In my mind, I’m observing the old trauma response starting, almost like it’s seen from the vantage point of someone outside my body using a control panel to affect this character that is “me”. I see them press a button with “panic sequence” written on it. Cue the hyperventilation. And force her into an embryo position on the dusty kitchen carpet. Commencing sequence. Pain in the chest. Crying, wailing. Pulling the legs in close, trying to become as small of a bundle on the floor as I’m able. Trying to disappear.
/
In my mind, I’m not actually anywhere close to my mind because I’m experiencing panic. In a way, my mind is gone while the panic lasts.
/
Also in my mind, but a tiny hidden corner of it, I’m becoming aware there’s another side of me that is able to observe the sequence as if from the outside. And that maybe this is the part of me (or I am a part of it?) that is in fact controlling this sequence.
In my mind, I construct narratives about the person who hurt me. The age-old violation usually experienced by a woman (but also others) in a patriarchal society. I create narratives about the perpetrator. The person who was the originator of those panic sequences. Or at least some of them. I blame them for the pain they caused. All those years after the event where I kept myself inside of a protective bubble, only to make my way out into a world where everything is pain. Because, when you’ve existed in a bubble, disconnected from it all, you’ve only put the emotions on hold. And now it’s time to feel it all. In my mind, I want to focus on the hate and anger, because those are the categories of emotions that fit inside the clear white box of the narrative I’ve created.
/
In my mind, I hold the ambiguity of a multifaceted relationship. I embrace the fond memories of the tenderness, the inspirations that we also shared. The way he drew stick figures, the delicious recipe he learned from his mother, climbing trees together, the flowers we taped to neighbors’ doors, the muffin left on my table with one single candle in it, “Carpe diem” written on a torn piece of paper.
And then, after the event; my need for total distance, creating a dramatic enough exit that he would leave me alone and deleting him from all the platforms. All of it a half-conscious strategy to protect myself because just seeing anything reminding me of him would trigger the panic sequence. And so, the protective bubble was placed over me. And it would take me thirteen years (and counting) to work my way through that bubble, to return to the world. To soften the shields and start opening my heart again.
/
And yet, in my mind, but on a subconscious level, I understand that I was not only a victim of that experience, because there is something deep inside of me that wanted needeed (???) to experience it.
There is a strange kind of a power you can only attain after experiencing something deeply shattering.
/
And yet, I wish I had never had to experience it. I wish no one would have to experience something like that.
/
And yet, I am grateful for what I learned from it.
/
My mind dances between these extremes, restlessly, unable to land in the middle.
/
In my mind, I discard all the memories, and silence the whispers from my subconscious, because they don’t fit into the categories of my chosen narrative. I tell myself it would be easier to hold on to the anger. Keep the shields up. The protective bubble in place.
/
In my mind, I reclaim all the memories. The “good” and the “bad”. They are all a part of my life’s journey. And I am starting to respect the wisdom of my subconscious and its paradoxical messages, whenever I’m able to hear it.
/
In my mind, I can see how the narrative loses its poignancy when I try to hold different sides. It’s all too ambiguous.
And yet, I also see that losing that narrative is what helps my heart to open.
In my mind, someone calls me a traitor to all the other “survivors”.
I never wrote “me too” on social media. I never stood with them. I’m still not doing it (or am I?) because this piece of writing is not a satisfying retelling of the righteous heroine standing up to address (or cancel) her oppressors.
It’s the story of someone trying to reclaim their heart
and trying to reconnect with their whole soul.
In my soul, that experience was a necessary part of my life path.
/
In my mind, I am experiencing a deep cognitive dissonance.
/
In my mind, I am learning to hold paradox.
/
In my soul, I know that there is no paradox. Or everything is paradox.
But also, there is just life.
Everything exists. Which means, that all perspectives on everything exists.
Everything and everything and everything and everything is growing outwards and inwards like an endless fractal.
And I am simply one part of it. An arm of the fractal, split off from the whole. Creating narratives that further split off the arms of the fractal.
But all this splitting off is nothing but an illusion.
In my narration, I am not actually splitting anything off. I am simply creating more arms for the fractal.
And they are all connected, in the fractal of the infinity of this life.
In my mind, I retreat back to the safety of my neat rows of categories. Fractals are too much for my human mind to hold.
/
And yet, in my mind, I now know about the fractal, even if I’ve only seen it in short glimpses.
/
In my mind, there’s a portal, like in everyone else’s. Yours too.
Your mind-portal of discernment is splitting up and filtering your view, because that’s just what it does. And that’s what it’s supposed to do.
That process of splitting is providing you with your narrative(s).
But you’re free to challenge the story.
To rewrite it.
Or keep it just as it is.
Weaving this narrative is a creative act.
All a part of the process
of living life
in this
endless
fractal
portal
.
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