The Ball Rolls Left, The Ball Rolls Right

Up late, in the dark, watching documentaries about people's own darkest hours and their impact on the world. Tonight it was "What's Wrong With Aunt Diane?" and "Boy Interrupted", both films about tragedy, death and grief, among other things. I don't watch these documentaries out of morbidity, but because I can understand, in my own way, their extreme communicated pain. It makes me feel human, sane, normal and less alone. It evokes deep compassion and the desire to leave this world better than I found it.

We all have pain. We all have places in our lives and in ourselves where suffering has taken its toll. Some of us have healed this, others of us only think we have. I read recently that as soon as you think you are healed you have more healing to do. This couldn't be more relevant to me. I thought I was healed, only to find I was in denial.

In my bath earlier tonight I went over my life story and how it came to be that I am so drawn to presence in the hour of another's suffering. I wanted to know why it was so important for me to help others work out their pain and suffering. I told myself the series of events leading up to today. I went through major mile markers in childhood, many of which were intense and traumatic. I made it through my teenage years, which were also hard, but also full of my own personal triumphs and trials that were not so closely related to the choices others made for me. I could only make it to age 18 before I had to stop. I am now 28.

I need to be able to tell myself my own story, to stop associating it only with turmoil and pain, to let the suffering of the past go. The three year block of time from 18 to 21 is just too painful, I can't get through it. And yet, I know there are treasures back there if only I can have the courage to find them.

I thought about talking with my spiritual counselor about that time and what I needed to work on, but I realized that I don't trust any man with my story of stripping. Particularly not with how it made me feel or what use it may have served in my psyche at the time. I scanned my memories and realized that I have seldom- if never, come across a man who was trustworthy in this way professionally. I realized that unless a man has wrestled with his own inner sexual beast, he cannot handle talking about mine. Mine was designed to lure his in, become his drug, and take him down. I had the Femme Fatale role understood and implicated in my subconscious mind at the naive stage of young adulthood.

Over many years of healing and reconditioning this part of myself, I feel sound in saying that, while I am not totally healed and repaired, I am able to see the sequence taking place and stop it before it gets out of hand when triggered. I am not so much concerned with the idea of a man over taking me as I am with a man I respect being untrustworthy and having a negative and painful self-fulfilling prophecy.

I feel more victimized by the idea of dead honor and integrity than I do by poorly chosen actions. I feel so disappointed with some the men I have turned to in my past for help, guidance and wisdom that I forget to see the men who have loved and cherished me well, who have nurtured and nourished me deeply without ever asking for a single thing in return aside from my sincere friendship. This shines a bright light in another area of my inner life in need of examination- my expectations, judgments and the way they color my perception of my life experience. It is very true that certain men in my past who were in my life in the role of helpers and guides behaved as predators and manipulators. It is also true that other men in my past were good, trustworthy and honorable friends to me in my times of greatest need. These men know my soul and are considered soul brothers. I love them deeply.

Knowing this reminds me that there is ever more work to be done, that my mind is in need of strengthening and conditioning. Everything I think is so, and none of it is true.

love to you and yours,

V