Finding the Center

(caution: struggles with self-injury and mention of suicidal feelings)

My father had what was initially thought to be a minor heart attack three weeks ago, but it turned out there wasn't any damage. It really threw me for a loop. I felt I couldn't bear to go through my father's death all over again, and it triggered a lot of feelings of abandonment from my first father's death (when I wasn't quite three). I had a session with my T in between hearing of the apparent heart attack and hearing the results of the tests, and in that session I went from abandonment into anger at both my fathers for not protecting me from the abuse. Very scary feelings--in the end I had a very hard time pulling myself back from just letting nonsense syllables come out of my mouth. Then last week in therapy I had a trance experience where I went out of my body and went towards death to a point where I could see my first father waiting for me. My T clearly felt comfortable with where I was and how I was understanding it. But afterwards I just wanted to go back there. I want so much to die. Not because my life is so bad, just because I want death so much. A lot of it is child feelings--the child wants to run into those arms.

I'm ok--I have a very strong commitment not to kill myself. If I can prevent it I will not do to my kids what my father did to me. The feelings of wanting to die aren't as constant now as they were the first few days. My T seems to feel that I will find inside myself a belief in life and so I am trying to stay with the feelings and hope something will happen to lead me to that. My husband and my T know about what I am feeling.

I wrote the above Sunday. I walked the labyrinth Sunday night, and while I didn't get the dramatic answer I was hoping for I did get a sense that somehow the answer is in giving to others. The problem is not that I have trouble giving to others, but that I put up walls and get scared because I feel that I have so little and I am afraid of giving it all away and having nothing left for myself. Somehow if I could connect more to the source I could feel love flowing into me at the same time it is flowing out of me. I'm not imaging being able to give forever, but rather being more in touch with the flow inside me so that I can both give with less fear and also follow the flow of my own needs. The opposite is the way I feel about sexuality still, just wanting to protect myself, to have nothing violate my boundaries, to be able to be whole and entire and un-penetrated.

I dreamed last night of building a channel in a river to put in a hydroelectric generator. Water is very much a symbol of the inner journey for me, so my mind is rather boggled that I am dreaming of harnessing that to produce light.

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