Monday, October 6, 2014
Last night was the first night I slept in my new apartment. My move into a new home I can call all my own (I do not have any roommates) was an important milestone for me.
I have lived by myself at other points in my life. But I can never say that I lived by myself without some subtle influence of trauma in those earlier moments of my life. So this new experience of once again living alone will actually be new in a different sense. I will finally be living on my own without my early life history still overshadowing me. I am continuing to move in the direction of acknowledging and working through how my earlier life history influenced my worldview. The wisdom and maturity I have gained these last fifteen months has not been won without a lot of dedicated work. I am nonetheless grateful for how much my life has changed.
I have this memory from my childhood that seems to be more than a memory of a single day. It is a memory of a certain theme that predominated during whole stretches of time. I recall feeling sad on Sundays. I sat with my memory of this theme and allowed myself to slowly ponder it while visiting the YMCA last night. And I made a commitment to myself: no more sad Sundays.
I sense I associate sadness with Sundays in part because weekends were a time when I was required to be less social by virtue of the fact that I had no compulsory school classes to attend on Sundays. Yes I did have homework to complete like most American children have to do over the course of a weekend during the school 'year'. There were long stretches in which my home life was terribly unsatisfying. I recall it was difficult for me to wake up on Mondays and feel (more) enthusiastic about the coming week (it would be a mistake to claim I was a morose, withdrawn kid throughout my childhood...I wasn't) partly due to the fact that my capacity to trust had been harmed at such a young age (when I was eight). I thus didn't look forward to being around people as much as I might have had I had the opportunity to deal with my grief and sorrow in a healthy way as a child. In short, the harm done to my capacity to trust really and truly influenced how well I socialized with other kids in junior high as well as high school.
The sadness and grief I am still working through now is, in my estimation, a very natural consequence of the fact that I am still adjusting to awakening from the distorted perception of the world that was my way of perceiving the world for such a very long while. Even good change such as awakening from a narrow view of the world isn't necessarily easy. Indeed, on rare occasions I have felt the process of awakening to be genuinely harrowing. But I am finding my way through it. I have been blessed to enjoy an effective care team which I painstakingly assembled over the course of a calendar year's worth of time.
While waiting for my final bus to bring me to my therapist's office last week I experienced a brief moment in which I could almost see and taste the dazzling possibilities that can and will await me in 2015 and beyond. Somewhere inside me I could feel a faith reforming that I am at the beginning of my true life...of the best years of my life. I had this feeling that when winter wanes away and the world turns green again next spring the powerful legacy of my early life history will finally really and truly no longer feel like such an immense burden.
No more sad Sundays.
Post Script
Fifty Day Challenge, Day #11
My healthy activities for today:
Last night was the first night I slept in my new apartment. My move into a new home I can call all my own (I do not have any roommates) was an important milestone for me.
I have lived by myself at other points in my life. But I can never say that I lived by myself without some subtle influence of trauma in those earlier moments of my life. So this new experience of once again living alone will actually be new in a different sense. I will finally be living on my own without my early life history still overshadowing me. I am continuing to move in the direction of acknowledging and working through how my earlier life history influenced my worldview. The wisdom and maturity I have gained these last fifteen months has not been won without a lot of dedicated work. I am nonetheless grateful for how much my life has changed.
I have this memory from my childhood that seems to be more than a memory of a single day. It is a memory of a certain theme that predominated during whole stretches of time. I recall feeling sad on Sundays. I sat with my memory of this theme and allowed myself to slowly ponder it while visiting the YMCA last night. And I made a commitment to myself: no more sad Sundays.
I sense I associate sadness with Sundays in part because weekends were a time when I was required to be less social by virtue of the fact that I had no compulsory school classes to attend on Sundays. Yes I did have homework to complete like most American children have to do over the course of a weekend during the school 'year'. There were long stretches in which my home life was terribly unsatisfying. I recall it was difficult for me to wake up on Mondays and feel (more) enthusiastic about the coming week (it would be a mistake to claim I was a morose, withdrawn kid throughout my childhood...I wasn't) partly due to the fact that my capacity to trust had been harmed at such a young age (when I was eight). I thus didn't look forward to being around people as much as I might have had I had the opportunity to deal with my grief and sorrow in a healthy way as a child. In short, the harm done to my capacity to trust really and truly influenced how well I socialized with other kids in junior high as well as high school.
The sadness and grief I am still working through now is, in my estimation, a very natural consequence of the fact that I am still adjusting to awakening from the distorted perception of the world that was my way of perceiving the world for such a very long while. Even good change such as awakening from a narrow view of the world isn't necessarily easy. Indeed, on rare occasions I have felt the process of awakening to be genuinely harrowing. But I am finding my way through it. I have been blessed to enjoy an effective care team which I painstakingly assembled over the course of a calendar year's worth of time.
While waiting for my final bus to bring me to my therapist's office last week I experienced a brief moment in which I could almost see and taste the dazzling possibilities that can and will await me in 2015 and beyond. Somewhere inside me I could feel a faith reforming that I am at the beginning of my true life...of the best years of my life. I had this feeling that when winter wanes away and the world turns green again next spring the powerful legacy of my early life history will finally really and truly no longer feel like such an immense burden.
No more sad Sundays.
Post Script
Fifty Day Challenge, Day #11
My healthy activities for today:
- Personal training session at the YMCA
- Closely inspecting my new apartment for any issues I need to report to management
- Going to an interview with a local health resource organization
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