Saw his ax between the trees He took his aim right at my knees Still I am one.
Hid behind the trees in fright I stood there frozen through the night But he was gone.
Did he find another world? Well I don’t know. Either way it’s time to cry They tell me so.
Pull myself between the sticks The sky was dim, the mud was thick Still I am one.
Something move inside my hair I jump three feet, was that him there? No he is gone.
Find a town to wander there Without a name. Watch them throw their marbles down For one more game.
The town. Mirrors all around. Windows to the sky. So I shut my eyes. And in the darkness flow. Into the woods I go. The night a single time. The town a single mind.
Take a breath to watch the sky See it open big blue eye Yeah we are one.
Hang their clothing on the line Through alleyways the people wind Into the dawn.
You could ask them where to stay But they won’t know. They just came to laugh and play They’ll tell you so.
I’ve been too scared to blog for a while because I’ve entered a new phase of my journey- healing.
Healing- after survival & stabilization- is the second phase in recovering from prolonged trauma- such as war or domestic battery.
I fear anyone reading this will be throwing up in their mouths right now because…
A) The very concept of healing sounds self-indulgent, almost narcissistic. What do you need to heal from you stupid bitch? It’s life, get over it.
B) I just compared domestic battery to war. I fear people will resent that because domestic violence has become something of a joke. My personal opinion (trigger alert) is that it became a joke when there was a push to redefine it as genderless crime & people like Johnny Depp bravely declared themselves battered men because they got slapped in the face after trashing their girlfriend’s bedroom. The word became “Violence is bad and any form of angry physical contact is violence.” I’ve heard people say that throwing a q-tip & holding a gun to someone’s head are equally bad cause “It’s all violence.”
But to me it isn’t. Violence is something which causes or threatens to cause grave bodily harm or death. Domestic violence means living in a state of terror, confusion & subjugation. Living in an environment where you are afraid someone will hurt or kill you and you don’t know how to leave. But rather than fight, you try harder and harder to please. Your mind separates into two pieces. One piece knows you must get away. This one starts out as a tiny dot which grows imperceptibly each time the violations are severe. The other piece is a wife trying more and more desperately to please her husband. This piece is unaware she is afraid of him, she is just so desperate to please.
Once you leave- IF you manage to leave- and IF you find a reasonably healthy way to survive- you have two tasks:
You must somehow leave the state of constant terror/anxiety/desperation/chaos because in this state you cannot think clearly or make good decisions. But it is hard to do when this has become your normal setting.
You have to unfuck your mind. Change how you think & make sense of life. Because if you don’t, someone will refuck you.
Perhaps if a previously healthy person was in a bad relationship for a few years it might be somewhat straightforward to return to the person they were before. But I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t terrified and trying to please, where my mind wasn’t divided into separate streams of memory- one stream containing all the good, the other containing the bad, and both streams unaware of each other.
I don’t understand why I always end up in these situations. I am sure it is something I’m doing… but what?
This is why I’ve taking some time to heal and enter a victim phase. I like the word victim because it is taboo. Everyone is so worried you will see yourself as a victim and take on a victim identity. Maybe I will use my victim card to get free cookies and shoulder massages from hard working people. People are concerned you that you will love being a victim so much you will make it your permanent identity.
But the thing is…. Those who continually wind up victimized DON’T see themselves as victims. That is part of the problem. Someone can drag them out of bed by their feet drop them on their head, kick them then spit in their ear and they feel this is a normal interaction between consenting adults. The inability to acknowledge when they are being victimized allows the cycle to continue.
These people are terrified to see someone else as bad. Because they have learned that this is dangerous. Even if you were to secretly acknowledge to yourself that someone else’s behavior is wrong, it could be dangerous. Because you would instinctively start to rebel. To stand up for yourself. Then things get worse. The way to be safe is to not see what is happening. Eventually you are so upside down its hard to know what is normal anymore because you just don’t have any reference points.
Good boundaries don’t magically stop a person from being victimized. I’m sure there were plenty of holocaust victims with great boundaries- at least before the horror began. But the violence & lack of power begin to break your boundaries down. You start to learn that self-assertion doesn’t serve you. You try to be small, bland and compliant.
But once you re-emerge from an abusive situation, your concentration camp boundaries DO make you more vulnerable. Plus you are desensitized to being mistreated. Red flags don’t trigger you like they should.
In domestic situations, you learned to try and love the danger away. You may instinctively dole out care in exchange for pain. You know how to be tiny & flexible with low standards & no needs, attracting those who want to use you. You’ve lost confidence in your own perceptions. You are afraid to negatively judge anyone’s behavior because flattery and idealization make you feel safe.
So I’m trying to rewire myself. Because I want to be a useful and productive member of this world. I am trying to understand how I came to be wired up like a victim, but mostly what I can do to change it.
I’ve learned a few wisdoms so far….To avoid those who insult, degrade or neg me. To avoid those who criticize or yell incessantly. To avoid those who talk nonstop about themselves and show no interest in me.
I’ve also realized I should stop consuming content that hurts and degrades women. Like podcasts where men vomit all over your sense of reality until you don’t feel good about life. And I must stop talking to myself harshly. A big part of healing seems to be learning to treat yourself how you want to be treated. This starts to normalize an uplifting vibe causing things which bring you low to register as repulsive.
I’ve also learned that I must use my rational mind more when making decisions. I can see that in the past I mostly made decisions driven by guilt, pity, fear, loneliness, pain, compulsion & hunger for love. Trying to move in the direction that would end the pain. Instead, you are supposed to turn on your brain and ask it, “What course of action is most likely to promote my long-term happiness?”
I think though that this healing process has made me more sensitive. I feel more hesitant to share things because being pelted with criticism and hatred doesn’t feel as palatable as it used to. I once prided myself on being immune to negative feedback. It felt like a massage. Now I just want to be in a safe place.
I’ve been making signs of all the wise things I learn to hang around my apartment.
I’ve also been doing art therapy, which I thought would be the dumbest thing ever, but I’m finding it transformative. These are my three animal totems- hummingbird, rabbit & whale who represent creativity, love & magic, not respectively.I want my apartment to be filled with all things flower. I am looking for a vibrant, almost third world vibe filled with my own creativity. For a long time, I did not want to be surrounded by anything I had a hand in creating. I wanted things to be delicate & refined. But I’m trying to bring the colors back into my body.
Ever since I left my husband, until recently, I’d been living on this plane- the Plane of Survival.
I was in shock, struggling to survive, not sure if I could, and everything I did, thought and felt was through a survival lens.
I read once that people struggling to survive do not get depressed, nor do they experience existential dread, because they know life has a meaning- to catch that slice of pizza before it slides down the drain.
Every day is a quest to live and when you succeed, that is meaning.
On the plane of survival you are wired with extra energy. Feelings are suppressed. Vision narrows. You can run like an antelope. You have springs in your feet. You are twice as strong as you were before.
You see relationships through a different lens. Does this person make me safer? This isn’t a gold digger wanting to get rich, because wealth and luxury don’t exist yet. Nor does status. You just want to know, will they feed me? Would they be there for me if I needed them? If not, the law of the jungle commands you invest yourself elsewhere.
On the Survival plane, I was Slipper’s drill sargeant. ‘March Slippers, march!!!’ I would shout as I drug her through the streets crying. ‘If we don’t get there in 5 minutes, do you realize we could lose our home?!’ I didn’t care how deranged I looked to other people. Dignity is the first thing thrown off a sinking ship. Once you let it go you realize it was 80% of your body weight. At any rate, the more frazzled and distraught I looked, the more likely random strangers would be to offer me a sandwich. When you truly are desperate, looking desperate can be a good thing.
If you meet a person on the Plane of Survival, give them something. They aren’t a mooch, they are actually in need and there’s a big difference. There are many ways people can reach this plane and we all pass through it eventually. But please, don’t give them a pep talk or philosophical lecture. In this state you have the mind of a dog and words don’t mean a thing. Give them a sandwich, a blanket, a $20 bill. Or more if you are one of the Angels of this Plane. These angels were the best part. I had no idea how kind people were before living here.
The other good part is this world’s briskness. You become bolder, braver, more invigorated than you ever were before. Because you can’t afford to hide away in your safe and calcified world. It doesn’t exist anymore. Every day becomes an adventure.
But it’s also a dangerous time, because you will latch onto ANYTHING that seems to offer safety, regardless of its long term impact. It’s not a state where you can make constructive decisions about your future. The future and past don’t exist. There is an alarm going off and you need to stop it.
And so you also meet bad people, due to your low standards and desperation. If there is no clear path before you, becoming a criminal is likely. You don’t have the brain space to dream up some brilliant plan forward. You are disconnected- internally & externally- from things uplifting.
I think what people need in this state is social support. If the focus is put on them being self-reliant at a moment when they are drowning, their actions are likely to be destructive to themselves or others. It is easier to become a Contributing Member of Society once a siren is no longer going off in your head.
How am I doing? Well, I’ve conquered the world of vice and now I can afford to buy a car. A few months back I was on the verge of homelesshess. Draw your own conclusions.
So what’s next for the woman who has turned Pure Evil into her little lap dog?
The World of the Sun.
The most wonderful thing about life is how there are infinite worlds to conquer. You can never exhaust them. A new world is a new mathematics. Everything changes. I love it. Every world is lucent and perfectly crystallized. It’s own rules. It’s own morality. I love it so much. Nothing makes me more excited than preparing to enter a new world. I am cleaning my apartment right now in anticipation.
I always thought of a home as a spaceship that lets you travel between worlds. You program it for the new world you want to enter and it flies you there. The most exciting thing ever.
Who knows what the future holds & when I’ll have to face the plane of survival again. God probably plunges all of us there periodically to give our red a tune up. But for this one moment, I am relatively safe. Safer than before. My apartment is warm. Warm air is the ultimate luxury.
And all through no virtue of my own. Quite the opposite. In fact, when I was living out my own version of virtue- working hard, setting sights low, inflicting pain on self when possible- I was sinking the fastest. Hard work can’t save you once you get too close to the realm of slaves. Cause money comes from other people. If money is about anything, it’s about social intelligence, not work. I still don’t have any of that though. I just temporarily hit some good luck.
Had I been saved by my own efforts, perhaps I’d emerge from the pit with a different philosophy. But as it is, I move forward with the feeling that a person’s own efforts have little impact on their destiny. It’s external influences that make or break us. We are one, they are many & hence far more powerful.
So while some see responsibility as focusing on what you can control, to me it means trying to befriend those things more powerful than you.
Like the sun. He is the King of our Solar System.
Decorating my apartment to prepare for the Sun’s arrival.
Luckily the sun doesn’t care if you are neat or messy.
Hearing men talk, I get the impression they store sexual acts in a Precious Memories scrapbook. “We’ll always have that night in Paris.” They seem to be under the delusion that women will also remember sex fondly regardless of what came after.
But for women, sex is a portal which can’t be separated from the world it led to. If it led to nothing, looking back the sex seems bland and sandy. If it led to degradation, retrospectively the sex feels like a spider.
It’s like unwrapping a beautiful present only to realize it contains your parent’s head. Once you know what’s inside, you remember the ribbons differently.
Ultimately, the dick cannot impress unless the man does.
Your penis will never occupy a special place in anyone’s memory unless you- the being connected to the penis- made a beautiful impact on that person’s life. Otherwise, your best moves are quickly overshadowed by a donut vibrator as your weiner’s memory fades in the rearview mirror. To shrink, to shrink again, then vanish altogether.
Or does a speck remain?
Either way, it is the man that makes the dick. Never the reverse.
And when a man himself is something wonderful- when he has an uplifting transformative impact on people- when he changes their lives for the better- when he isn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and get messy and dream, grow, hurt, be humbled, change, endure- when he can embrace pain & strive to become a hero like the ones in storybooks- then I believe his penis lives forever- growing longer & longer in the memory of everyone he touched.
A glass dildo received as a gift. It is funny because I refer to glass dildos frequently in astrology readings as emblematic of Neptune in the House of Sex but didn’t realize they were a thing in real life.
It was given to me by an astrology non-believer who of course has Neptune in the House of Sex. Fascinating perverts.
I never wanted to leave my country- The United States of America- but something came up and I had to go to Argentina. It is scary. I had planned to make my way through life as a Beggar but now I eat gigantic steaks with wine every night. Plus appetizers & desserts. Anything I want.
Here cost is no object. Before it was the only object. I don’t know how to think about this new reality. It will be hard to go back to the world I knew before. If that world still exists.
You don’t know how delicious this food is. So much pleasure squeezed into every meal. I have never been a food person but this is a transcendent experience. A dimension of life I didn’t know existed. Here, you don’t eat to survive. You eat to experience pleasure. And the people you eat with want you to experience pleasure. It makes them happy.
Pleasure is confusing. I always felt my value came from pain. Increasing my pain capacity, my pain appreciation, the value I could extract from pain. Believing I could turn pain into something life sustaining was the source of my confidence.
Now I’m trying to make sense of life through a pleasure lens. I don’t know where this is leading yet. I’m afraid I’ll puff up then dissolve like a cracker left in soup. Doesn’t pleasure make people soft, selfish, inconsequential? It tastes so good tho I can’t say no. Do you have any idea how many flavors are packed into every meal? Little treats they bring you between courses?
What will happen to me if I start to crave pleasure? Will I still be okay with people being assholes? I’m afraid I’ll lose the strengths that helped me survive.
Here I’m supposed to order what I want. Okay then. Appetizer, entree, main course, dessert one. Dessert Two. Wine. More wine. Strange liquors.
No one is critical of me. Before, I worked so hard, but was considered dumb and lazy. Now I’m sprawled in bed like a pig, yet considered smart and kind. The room costs $750 a night. Why? No one knows. Why is the bed the size of a swimming pool? Why are the walls covered in gold? The rules of life have changed. It may be a trick, but it feels so good- bread, wine, cookies, desserts- I can’t pull myself away.
Beds so large. Rooms so gold. The people are educated and polite. Best of all, they are so sympathetic. They never say, “Whose fault is that, bitch?!” when you slip on a marble floor. It’s “My poor baby!” instead. They don’t hoard money but let it go like feathers. Why am I in this world and what am I supposed to learn from it? Am I really here just to pleasure myself? Is there some deeper meaning?
The people are so smart. Their thinking is conventional. They never peer behind curtains to see what is hidden. If a dog is sleeping they let it lie. Why rock the boat when each person is served a giant toasted cheese- the size of a book- to eat before dinner?
Everyone speaks different languages too. If they wanted to say something snarky how could they? It’s buenos and smiles as far as the eye can see.
And if you want to walk home after dinner, you’ll be escorted. If you prefer to drive, you’ll be driven. I don’t know what is happening but I hope it turns out well.
Two weeks later I’m back on American soil. Slippers is so happy.
