What Happens When We Are Not Present

Monday, November 25, 2013

Today was yet another one of those days in which the end of the day did not resemble the beginning of the day in any way whatsoever.  I started out feeling exhilarated and very encouraged.  I went to the gym early, completed my core conditioning class and then swam in the pool.  My friend Arlene then picked me up and I went to see my therapist.  I had a productive session recounting what I experienced during an amazing shamanic soul retrieval session I had this past Saturday.  At some point in the near future I hope to recount at least some of what I experienced.  For now I am keeping the experience close to my heart.

My heart feels quite tender now considering how the day concluded.  Upon arriving home I became ensnared once again in an ongoing issue with my landlord that I thought had subsided.  Instead I found myself reading an email in which I was asked what day this coming weekend I was going to be moving out.  I found myself feeling the way I have previously when receiving a very unpleasant surprise namely dazed, irritated and exasperated.  My landlord knows about the existence of my PTSD.  Yet that seems to have no bearing in his own thought process.  It all seems very weird to me.

I concluded long ago that one of the worst things we can do in our lives is not be present to what is actually around us.  So many of our problems can begin when we aren't paying attention to the world around us.  As I come out of a long, long period of unconscious dissociative behavior I appreciate all the more how vital it is that we pay attention to our lives as they unfold, second by second, day by day, week by week, month by month.  There is so much we can miss when we do not pay attention.  When we move through the world in a state of preoccupation, dissociation or the blurred vision resulting from trauma we aren't really present to what is unfolding around us.  And if we aren't where our bodies are then where ultimately are we?

As time passes and I awaken to how much I was actually not present I see the world in the present moment in a vividness I cannot recall regularly experiencing on a daily basis.  And so I now find myself experiencing many, many moments (usually at least several times every day now) in which I suddenly look around myself and marvel at the quality of the world.  I see sunlight falling on someone's hair.  I feel the wind blowing against my back.  I hear the sounds of leaves long since withered away still clinging to nearly empty branches and blowing in the late autumn wind.  I see the character of people as rendered in the lines and smiles of their faces.  I appreciate the subtleties of light and shadow playing on a church wall or filtering through a set of stained glass windows.  I look about me and see an amazing world.  And then I find myself asking myself where I have been for so long.

I realize it is quite natural for human beings to dissociate when we are exposed to sudden, intense pain or a long period of persistent pain in which there seems to be no end.  A person has limits beyond which they cannot be pushed without potentially serious consequences.  We all have pain thresholds.  Once we are pushed beyond them it seems we find automatic ways to cope that we may eventually no longer consciously notice.  I realize that this happened to me.  As a little boy watching my mother descend into schizophrenia it was only natural I develop a means of coping with the pain of the horror and sadness I felt.  It seems perfectly natural to me now that I would start to dissociate and that I would eventually forget what I had begun doing.  Such can be the power of coping mechanisms we use in times of immense stress.

I am committed to living a life of being present now.  I want to live my life to the fullest.  It's not always easy but I never want to feel as if I have died inside.  I see that I am continuing to heal each and every day.  I will not allow anything to subvert this process if it is within my power to prevent it.