That Sad Feeling

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Yesterday evening I completed an eventful therapy session.  I’m learning a lot about myself these days.  I am mostly recalling how much sadness I felt the summer of 1982.  That was the summer I was eight years old.  I have realized recently that I went to sleep most days that summer wondering if I would actually live to see my birthday that September.  It’s been quite a painstaking process to reconstruct the significant events of my earliest years of development.  But gradually I am piecing together a mosaic…and I am understanding how it became easy to be suspicious and cynical.

I still find myself marveling at how so much sadness could fit inside the body of an eight-year old boy.  I also marvel at how successfully I managed to dissociate myself from that immense sadness.  Now here it is appearing fully in my consciousness some thirty-two years later.  Surprise!

The days are long, the trees and grass are immensely lush and I keep awakening a bit more each day to all this dissociated emotional ‘material’ inside me.  I continue to notice this beautiful world outside my own body.  I feel deeply grateful for my clear vision.

I am taking a much needed break during the upcoming long weekend by getting out of the familiar terrain of the Twin Cities. The change of scenery will be a nice jolt.  I’ll be spending the weekend near Fergus Falls, Minnesota where I’ll likely be bombed by a cloud of mosquitoes at least once.  With all the rain we had in the month of June the mosquitoes of Minnesota will probably be biting countless residents of the state.

I recall when I once thought it was healthy to love the people within my paternal family of origin.  Now I wonder how I could have felt that way.  I have discovered a whole new landscape in my interior life.  It's a landscape I would not allow myself to explore.  It's time I did so now.