Welcome again, my wish to write, my wish to get better, it's been a while.
Today I did a guided meditation, something I've been thinking of for weeks, but haven't done it since that one app stopped working on my phone. Finding your own meditations to follow, is also difficult, trusting someone's voice to guide you through your body and mind, isn't easy, or maybe it is for others, how could I know how you experience life?
In today's meditation, the man guided a visualization of myself, something I have never done before: "Visualize yourself as you are right now", it wasn't intuitive even after years of doing body scans three times a day mostly. I had to remember moments in which I've seen my reflection on shop windows and big full-body mirrors (which I don't really have), and I thought: "man, I don't have a mental image of how I actually look, maybe that's also why I feel so bad about myself" -Seeing your belly from the perspective of your own head, just hanging there under your tits, which feel too far apart to be in any way pretty, may shift the idea of how your body actually looks like, but no one else sees you from that perspective, so maybe trusting a shop's display reflection makes more sense indeed.
What I did after, to bring that reflection image into a proper three-dimensional and alive version of me, inside my head, was to caress her hair, and her cheeks, touch her shoulders and arms, hug her and gave gentle, loving taps on her torso and legs. Just like that, somehow, this beautiful little creature was me, and she was so happy to see me and I was so happy to see her.
At this point, my visualization went on its own by holding her cheeks, kissing her forehead and running my fingers through her hair in a very caring, motherly way. I felt full of love for that moment in time, I felt full.
The man kept talking, and he said to repeat the next phrase:
- "May I be happy? Remember a time in which you were happy"
Now here is where it began to get interesting but in a different way. As I asked, the image of me got very excited about the idea of finally being happy, but as I had to remember a time in which I was happy, I looked at this week and found snippets of that, but most had such bittersweetness in them, so I looked further in the last months, same thing, year, same thing. I looked as far as my childhood, I thought, maybe a time before the responsibilities of adulthood, maybe before the hormonal changes of teenagerhood, maybe as far as before starting school altogether.
No memory of my life was clean, every single one of them was tainted with pains of the mind or the heart, whether that was abandonment, loneliness, pressure or anxieties for trying to belong somewhere. -The man continued:
- "May I be safe? and remember a time when you felt safe" Now I found myself in a few moments of safety, but realising all the times in which I don't, as a highly sensitive, neurodivergent, female read creature on this fast-paced, loud, violent society, is hard to feel safe. So all the safety times, were with my current partner, for all the past ones brought upon more unsafety, while I had to protect them as well. Still, not many memories of safety in my life, a woman who took care of me as a toddler came to my mind; quiet times alone at home here, when my upstairs neighbors are gone; James' warm hands when he hugs me in the way I like it. That is all, for 30 years of life, how can it be that I have so few memories of feeling safe? As a neurodivergent kid, it makes sense.
- "May I be healthy? ..."
My body has never truly felt healthy, the mere experience of being human is exhausting more often than not, the stiffness of my bones, the way my belly folds on itself, my neck crumbling on my shoulders, the tension on my head, jaw and hips, the pains on my knees and ankles. The incapacity of moving as freely as I wish I could, the lack of energy on my dancing, my acting; I have never felt capable of physically being a human as others do, flexibile and tension-free bodies, a dream I've never been able to achieve.
- "May I live with ease" ..."
Absolutely no memories life being intuitive or easier to navigate. Obstacles and difficulties all over. I cannot see the shore as I've been trying to stay afloat on this broken boat as the storm never ends in the ocean of life. -Is that not how life feels like?
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Seeing myself made me happy, realizing that my 30 years on this planet, have been mostly covered with unsafety, sadness, loneliness, abandonments, sadness, exclusion, difficulties and obstacles... makes me understand why I continue to have such a miserable existence and just a few moments of happiness here and there. I've been conditioned to be unhappy from birth, and I try my very best to give myself the love I deserve, the safety and joy, but it's been a short lifetime of pain with a few years of joy.
How can I expect so much more from me?
But I will continue to try, I will continue to hug me, I will continue to bring safety, company and ease to my body and heart, to my life. To bring relaxation and love to my body and soul. For it's worth it, in each of those little glimpses of goodness I have lived, I see the worth and I see where I want to be.