Becoming Involved again

Today is about awareness that my living has been hampered by my need to keep one eye open, somehow on guard, prepared, bags packed, keys in bag, ready for........ I have known this for a while and seen its manifestation in good and bad ways. In some situations it has enabled me to use willpower to get me through, to succeed against the odds, to get the job done, in others it has left me unable to sit still and just be with myself. Although the awareness has been there for some time now the simple fact that I have found it increasingly difficult to get "stuck in" to anything has really hit home. I have sat doing nothing, I have sat with my feelings and let them out, I have run from things, I have fought, I have feared, all of it has something to do with an uneasiness that probably has its roots in many events in my life where I simply felt or experienced the sense that I had been surprised, shocked, wasnt expecting it and the resulting lack of being able to recover and instead to get going, fight, run, just deal with it. But........the sitting, the being and the calming down just never happened. What i am trying to say is that as a child and as an adult the happiest moments for me are when time passes, I am involved, I am absorbed, I am IN LIFE. This is the state that has eluded me, this is the state that I seek, it is driving my search for the "right" way to earn a living and it is the awareness that informs the way I deal with my life, my decisions. I have been far happier in the past, NOT to get involved, to skim past, delving in deep, but always for a short while, not the contented, constant, long lived involvement and absorption. The kind of state you are in when you get lost in a movie, or in a kiss or even dancing, driving....the state where you are neither asleep nor super alert. The state we should be in all of the time. I realise that our culture encourages the rushing from one thing to another and not being present, it is trauma that sent me off on this "way" an internal fear and nothing on the outside.

I was reminded of this state and my beliefs that if we release emotion at the time, we will relax again and not remain on alert, by a couple of things in the last day. A challenging piece of news that someone I used to live near died suddenly last year, aged 37 leaving three young boys without a mother. I could not stop thinking about the "state" they must have found themselves in, the state I guess I must know from the day my father died suddenly aged 39. It is hard to explain, but I did not catch up to what had happened, I didnt process the facts from the emotions, the implications, the changes, I adapted and I adapted in ways that were coping and not releasing and how ever hard I feel the emotions there is a button inside that is primed to respond with unease at the slightest provocation of a similar situation - well at least in my mind. The second prompt was an ex colleague of mine having remembered a conversation about my interest in the mind, body and emotional links and how therapists in the world of "mind" therapy are starting to understand that emotions are held in the body and that even if we talk it all through, the body has to feel and release the state. She is working with young people and I have every faith that in future, anyone experiencing a sudden fear state will release it at the time and not carry the response into their lives - it can get mighty confusing! For now, I am enjoying giving myself time and permission to experience the absorption of switching off and getting fully involved and for me this is working with my hands, my mind quietens and there is no need for analysing or speaking or wondering if something is about to "happen" in the back of my mind.

There have been many un-welcome surprises in my life, more than a lot of people I think and in some ways this has prevented me from really accepting that although some of my responses and adaptations were appropriate for the circumstances, some of my responses to other things are not, they are driven by my need to "control" and stay safe and really life doesnt have to be that hard - in the name of keeping myself "safe" or those around me or testing my ability to cope and deal with stuff I have inadvertently forgotten how to get totally absorbed in the enjoyment of living. Heres to a more easful future.