Love
So, I had another “dream” last night and it brought me to see something very painful and difficult about myself. I need to share it because if I don’t it’s like it didn’t happen.
I had a good day yesterday. I had to go to a kind of stupid training session for a project I am involved with. At the session were people I really like, people I have come to love in fact just because that’s the way I feel about them. There were two women in particular that make me very positive and happy about life seeing the way they are. They are really good people. There is nothing romantic in this although I find them physically attractive. They are both married and mothers and I know and like their husbands, too. One of their better qualities is the kind of mothers they are, in fact. I was happy because I never used to feel that way about anyone. It’s not that I didn’t feel. I just channeled all my feelings through my analytical mind. I stripped them of any actual emotion so I could control them. This was kind of heady to actual be engulfed in emotion.
The same day I realized that a woman who was my lover and whom I still love was leaving the door open for me for me to renew, perhaps, our relationship. I offered to give her some no strings attached financial support a few weeks ago and I have been fulfilling my promise. She didn’t ask, but she is a single mom and stressed out. She was very important to my transformation. She’s like us. She was raped by her step-father for several years beginning at 11. Her mother is still married to him even though she was told by two of her daughters what was going on. My ex-lover is 46 years old now.
This brought up a lot of very complex feelings. I still love her. I always will, but our relationship was not good. For my part I couldn’t help but feeling like a machine when we were physical. I didn’t want to be that way. I tried not to be that way, but it just kept happening. She had her own insecurities that made it very hard for her to trust. I understood, but that didn’t help. In any case we broke up over a year ago and I never looked back. We both knew and said that we couldn’t really be friends. That was true.
So, knowing that I was probably being invited to renew things brought up a lot of feelings in me. Feeling of love but also the conviction that that’s “just not right for me”. I have learned to be suspicious of myself when my instinct is to shut down my emotions. That’s what I always did to cope and it was absolutely not a good strategy. So I was pushing against this feeling that love was not for me, as I should. I tell myself that it is actually hubris to think that way, that it isn’t my decision if someone loves me, but still I didn’t think it would ever be for me.
After my training session I spent a couple of hours with two good friends who I trust and who have been a big help to me. My relationship with them is one of the clear examples of how I’ve become a much more human man.
So, I got home overwrought with feelings of love, affection and desire and confused and doubtful about my perceptions and “decisions” about what was right for me. I knew I had to explore this feeling/idea that love was not for me. So, when I went to bed I decided I needed to go to my Garden which I wrote about in my last post. I got there easily and walked over to a stream with a pool that I often find there. I took off my clothes and went into the pool. I lay in the water feeling cleaner and thinking about how I could feel love now but not want it, or something. As I was lying there looking up at the sky, the Singular Man appeared leaning over me and looking down into my face and asked, “What’s going on?”. I started to tell him about how I was afraid of love, but how good it was to be able feel love, etc. Then he asked if he could join me. I said “Yes”, of course. He took off his robe and sat down in the pool. I specifically remember not looking at his body. When he entered the water it got pleasantly warm. I continued to tell him about my fear of love, about how I couldn’t explain to anyone why I was like I was, how it just couldn’t work, etc. He just listened. He asked me some questions I don’t remember and he always said, “Well, there you go.” When I answered. Then when I was explaining how terrible it felt to feel like a machine with my lover and I didn’t know how I could ever not be that way, the Singular Man asked, “How would you feel if someone who saw you in full bloom (being the best I could be) loved you seeing you like that and knowing you?” When he asked me that I thought I would answer afraid or cautious or too self involved, or something. But the answer that came to me was Disgust. Disgust. That hit me so hard I couldn’t say anything. It was like my mind just stopped at the truth of it. I didn’t know how to deal with that. After a little bit of my silence, the Singular Man just said, “There you go.” He got up from the pool and this time I looked at him. I saw old man genitals and then he turned into a brilliant light and then back again until he put his robe on and went away.
When I woke up later in the night I was still there in my mind. I went back to when I was 10 in the weeks and months after being raped when I asked God to take me away and to save me. I realized that what I was asking him to do was erase what had happened to me and erase the boy I felt I was. But all God could offer me was Love and that disgusted me so I turned away from it. I continued to turn away from it for decades whenever anyone loved or might love me. It disgusted me.
When I finally woke up in the morning and remembered the disgust and how I turned away from life and love and God, who was very very important to me when I was a boy, it was very painful. I was on the verge of breaking down. I got angry, too, at myself for being that way, at what I’d turned my back on in life. I’m OK. I’m trying to process this. The answer I came to in the dream was absolutely true but I’ve never been able to see it before. That feeling that loving me is disgusting has been with me for a very long time and it has been a motor in many of my decisions.
I have a lot of work to.
I know that this disgust is something many of you have experienced, but reading about and actually seeing it in yourself are very different things. It won’t just go away. I am confused but I know I can’t be anything else but confused now…
Thank you all for reading this and being here to understand.
I had a good day yesterday. I had to go to a kind of stupid training session for a project I am involved with. At the session were people I really like, people I have come to love in fact just because that’s the way I feel about them. There were two women in particular that make me very positive and happy about life seeing the way they are. They are really good people. There is nothing romantic in this although I find them physically attractive. They are both married and mothers and I know and like their husbands, too. One of their better qualities is the kind of mothers they are, in fact. I was happy because I never used to feel that way about anyone. It’s not that I didn’t feel. I just channeled all my feelings through my analytical mind. I stripped them of any actual emotion so I could control them. This was kind of heady to actual be engulfed in emotion.
The same day I realized that a woman who was my lover and whom I still love was leaving the door open for me for me to renew, perhaps, our relationship. I offered to give her some no strings attached financial support a few weeks ago and I have been fulfilling my promise. She didn’t ask, but she is a single mom and stressed out. She was very important to my transformation. She’s like us. She was raped by her step-father for several years beginning at 11. Her mother is still married to him even though she was told by two of her daughters what was going on. My ex-lover is 46 years old now.
This brought up a lot of very complex feelings. I still love her. I always will, but our relationship was not good. For my part I couldn’t help but feeling like a machine when we were physical. I didn’t want to be that way. I tried not to be that way, but it just kept happening. She had her own insecurities that made it very hard for her to trust. I understood, but that didn’t help. In any case we broke up over a year ago and I never looked back. We both knew and said that we couldn’t really be friends. That was true.
So, knowing that I was probably being invited to renew things brought up a lot of feelings in me. Feeling of love but also the conviction that that’s “just not right for me”. I have learned to be suspicious of myself when my instinct is to shut down my emotions. That’s what I always did to cope and it was absolutely not a good strategy. So I was pushing against this feeling that love was not for me, as I should. I tell myself that it is actually hubris to think that way, that it isn’t my decision if someone loves me, but still I didn’t think it would ever be for me.
After my training session I spent a couple of hours with two good friends who I trust and who have been a big help to me. My relationship with them is one of the clear examples of how I’ve become a much more human man.
So, I got home overwrought with feelings of love, affection and desire and confused and doubtful about my perceptions and “decisions” about what was right for me. I knew I had to explore this feeling/idea that love was not for me. So, when I went to bed I decided I needed to go to my Garden which I wrote about in my last post. I got there easily and walked over to a stream with a pool that I often find there. I took off my clothes and went into the pool. I lay in the water feeling cleaner and thinking about how I could feel love now but not want it, or something. As I was lying there looking up at the sky, the Singular Man appeared leaning over me and looking down into my face and asked, “What’s going on?”. I started to tell him about how I was afraid of love, but how good it was to be able feel love, etc. Then he asked if he could join me. I said “Yes”, of course. He took off his robe and sat down in the pool. I specifically remember not looking at his body. When he entered the water it got pleasantly warm. I continued to tell him about my fear of love, about how I couldn’t explain to anyone why I was like I was, how it just couldn’t work, etc. He just listened. He asked me some questions I don’t remember and he always said, “Well, there you go.” When I answered. Then when I was explaining how terrible it felt to feel like a machine with my lover and I didn’t know how I could ever not be that way, the Singular Man asked, “How would you feel if someone who saw you in full bloom (being the best I could be) loved you seeing you like that and knowing you?” When he asked me that I thought I would answer afraid or cautious or too self involved, or something. But the answer that came to me was Disgust. Disgust. That hit me so hard I couldn’t say anything. It was like my mind just stopped at the truth of it. I didn’t know how to deal with that. After a little bit of my silence, the Singular Man just said, “There you go.” He got up from the pool and this time I looked at him. I saw old man genitals and then he turned into a brilliant light and then back again until he put his robe on and went away.
When I woke up later in the night I was still there in my mind. I went back to when I was 10 in the weeks and months after being raped when I asked God to take me away and to save me. I realized that what I was asking him to do was erase what had happened to me and erase the boy I felt I was. But all God could offer me was Love and that disgusted me so I turned away from it. I continued to turn away from it for decades whenever anyone loved or might love me. It disgusted me.
When I finally woke up in the morning and remembered the disgust and how I turned away from life and love and God, who was very very important to me when I was a boy, it was very painful. I was on the verge of breaking down. I got angry, too, at myself for being that way, at what I’d turned my back on in life. I’m OK. I’m trying to process this. The answer I came to in the dream was absolutely true but I’ve never been able to see it before. That feeling that loving me is disgusting has been with me for a very long time and it has been a motor in many of my decisions.
I have a lot of work to.
I know that this disgust is something many of you have experienced, but reading about and actually seeing it in yourself are very different things. It won’t just go away. I am confused but I know I can’t be anything else but confused now…
Thank you all for reading this and being here to understand.
.
.
