Blowing up the Death Star

Tags

Achilles heel, bogey men, Brutalised, Death Star, defiled, Depression, flower offerings, gravitational field, gut instincts, Incense, jasmine, light therapy treatment, Mantra, Meditation, nurturing, PTSD, Sanskrit, self-love, Skywalker, space junk, Star Wars, supta virasana, Trauma, use the force, yellow daisies

It was something about my face…of course, that’s where most of the physical damage was caused. And so, after leaving work on Thursday I did something that wasn’t particularly logical, all things considered.

I found myself at a beauty salon, wanting some kind of facial treatment. It was money I didn’t really have or intend to spend, but I didn’t even think about it like that.

Ended up getting a peel and they also suggested this light therapy thing. Didn’t know what it was, but it sounded good.

You look like you’re in need of a pick-me-up, the therapist slowly scanned my face and eyes.

Yep… [and I’m REALLY trying not to cry].

I did though, but not while she was in the room.

Somehow my instincts knew this was a good idea. Someone soothing my face with beautiful products and massaging my skin while delicate music was piped into the room. Low lighting and glorious aromas. An oasis in the middle of the city, a level up from one of the busiest intersections in town (not that you’d have known it).

She finished with the peel and prepped me for the light therapy treatment. Little goggles on my eyes. Something positioned over my head.

It’s really, bright. It takes a moment to get used to it. I’ll turn on one light first, then the other.

Soooo bright, yep, she wasn’t lying. Although my eyes were tightly closed nothing was black – instead everything glowed golden-red. And after a few moments I thought that this is probably what consciousness is like when we’re no longer limited to a human form. Everything as one, so very luminous. It wasn’t scary, just really relaxing.

Later I cried some more while I dressed – me with my smooth new skin that felt and looked wonderful. Sure I was a little shiny, but I was going straight home so what did I care.

I cleaned my practice room – vacuumed and dusted. I read these posts by Nadine and Kerry – which were incredibly timely (thanks gals!). I cried a whole bunch more as I snipped yellow daisies (I think?) and jasmine from the bushes outside my apartment.

My yoga practice was very simple – some breathing and then a supported supta virasana (although with the bolster further away from my lower back so I could tilt my pelvis forward more than the woman in this picture).

This pose always feels like hell when I first lie back, but once I relax it generates the most open and joyous feeling – the supported version is awesome if you’re feeling fragile!

Then I felt more open in both the hips and the heart. It was time for my practice which involves a series of chants and prayers in Sanskrit, and generating love, gratitude, compassion and wonder. Some incense and flower offerings, mantra repetitions and then… sitting. Just sitting in meditation for as long as I needed to.

My altar, adorned with flowers

There’s a bunch of structured or form-based meditations I’ve learned, but that’s not what I needed just then. So I just sat, following my breath and listening to my body, relaxing deeply. I think I sat there for around an hour.

From this place comes information. I got the face thing, then. Five years ago, it’d been defiled. Brutalised. And then I’d allowed it to hold my shame and fear. I’d also grown an invisible mask that covered my eyes as well as my entire face. I didn’t want people to see me. I didn’t want to see them. I wouldn’t let anyone get too close, just in case they were dangerous.

But now I’d begun reversing all of that with a symbolic gesture of self-love and nurturing (gotta love those gut instincts).

Then I noticed a whole bunch of energy rising up in waves from my stomach to my heart. Many layers. Hello, Fear. Hi, Despair. What’s up, Grief? How-dee-do, Shock? Each one reaching upwards, evaporating and integrating and no longer weighing a tonne in my belly.

I’ve never really told anyone this: my meditation practice suffered a great deal when all of this went down. I stopped for the longest time and felt terrible about it. But how could I meditate when those things could happen to me?

It took a long, long time to regain that ground.

The problem most of the time was relaxing (impossible to meditate if you’re tense!) and closing my eyes (which made sleeping quite tricky), because behind closed eyes was where all the scary stuff lurked.

Which is why the whole light therapy treatment thing was SUCH an extra amazing piece of synchronicity because that light – so warm and golden – blasted away any last possible dark hiding place.

See? No bogey men here!!

So I continued sitting and breathing until I felt like all the shackles I’d built up were undone. At least right at that moment anyway. I did some closing chants, extinguished the candles and slept deeply. Dreamlessly.

I felt… much better. Calm, and perhaps still fragile but MUCH better.

I’d never before felt the pull of this date or tied any meaning to it. September 29^th has not once been circled in my calendar and I’ve never held on to it as a marker of what happened. Perhaps because I was trying to forget, I’m not really sure.

BUT this time around I wasn’t allowed to let it pass by (thanks tiny but accurate voice of intuition!) and I think that MAYBE… this is truly the beginning of my freedom.

Maybe it’s time – maybe I’m ready to no longer think of myself in relation to what happened, y‘know?

I suspect that to be able to say I am truly healed; this thing that happened has to become unimportant to who I now am. It can’t be a reference point for everything that happens moving forward and I can’t continue to orbit around it like it’s the center of my being.

Sure, for a long time that’s exactly how it felt. Like I was just space junk held in the gravitational field of the Death Star (i.e. the trauma, the PTSD, the depression, the memories of What Happened).

And somehow, the realisation of this milestone date, and exactly how far I’ve come in that time, not to mention some timely and amazing facial treatments (including all of that LIGHT!) were the killer shot, right in the Death Star’s Achilles heel.

Just like young Skywalker, somehow I found a way to use the force and blast that sucker… totally disabling its ability to destroy anything anymore.

But… I could be wrong. Time will tell I guess. At the very least, this is the beginning of the end of it all… Just like the end of my PTSD flashbacks, I’ll wait and watch.

In the meantime, I can’t believe how much better I feel. Possibly this is akin to how my old Self felt once upon a time, not that I can remember Her too well…

But it’s been a REALLY long time since I felt this good.

~Svasti

(With apologies to those who don’t get my geeky Star Wars references!)  😉

Involuntary actions – part 4

Tags

bachelor party, cash for flesh, defiled, Denial, drinking games, Embarrassment, Fear, foreboding sense of doom, French knickers, humiliation, naivety, Night of Monumental Bad Choices, pregnant, regret, Sadness, Shame

This post may be too much information for some. If you don’t wanna know, maybe skip this one?

[Read part 1, part 2 & part 3 first]

I didn’t like to think about it, not even in my most private moments. Except that I did. Couldn’t help it really.

Such a fuzzy combination of nothingness blended with images, loud thoughts and soft, a strange procession of ideas and most pressingly, regret. It didn’t come straight away but with more time to reflect it was glaringly obvious that I’d made a foolish, foolish mistake.

I can tell you what I think, what I remember, what I suspect, but I can’t tell you what really happened. I’ll never understand everything, clouded as it was in alcohol and crowded out by my ridiculous adversity to taking care of myself.

Belief was my downfall. Always a belief in the best of people until proven otherwise.

But people not doing their best is not always evil, is it? It’s not always bad or wrong. Or maybe that just depends entirely on your point of view. In any case, I can’t tell you what happened, if I had sex with anyone that night and if I did, how many.

I suspect I did though. Like, really suspect. I’m almost sure that I did but there’s no way for me to prove it. Not then, and certainly not in retrospect.

And there’s no doubt that I was entirely at fault for being there in the first place.

It was a Night of Monumental Bad Choices. Not my last or first. But certainly a rather memorable one.

I got the call. Others had already turned the job down because of the distance. But the money was tempting, even though I didn’t have a car and it was a really, really long way to go. A bunch of guys for a bachelor party wanting a semi-naked lingerie-clad female to entertain them for the night.

M wasn’t sure about the gig and wanted me to use her driver – have him come and pick me up late in the evening.

We organised to meet at the Portsea Pub because the beach house they were staying at wasn’t easy to get to. They’d drive me there and M’s driver would pick me up later. That’d been the plan anyway.

They were a nice looking bunch of guys – preppy-ish but down to earth and clearly money wasn’t an issue. Conveniently since we were at a pub, they asked what I’d be drinking that night. It was beer for them and Baileys for me.

Off the beaten track and surrounded by trees. It was a pretty weatherboard split level house. Already there were many cars in the drive. I was shown into a room to change and came out in French knickers, suspenders and heels.

The boys decided we’d play drinking games and here’s where I forgot (rather crucially) that I wasn’t among friends, but employers of my flesh. I drank with bravado and really didn’t think it through. Sure I can keep up with the boys no problems! [Are you shaking your head yet?] By the time M’s driver called I was pleasantly wasted and easily persuaded to stay the night, with the offer of a lift home the next day.

What did we do in those hours? I can’t say. There were flirtations and craziness. Games, silliness. The groom fell drunkenly on a glass table, swiftly dispatched to hospital for stitching. Then he was back and still partying of course. It was his party, after all! I ended up in the back of a station wagon with one I thought was cute… but I think it didn’t go anywhere in the end. I think…

There’s hours I don’t recall. Then, the unpleasantly creepy surprise of waking up in the groom’s bedroom with him standing over me, somewhere deep into the middle of the night. He must’ve carried me there and I wondered how he’d done it given the stitches he’d just earned. And I remember leaving the room and finding a bunk to pass out in.

It all seemed harmless enough until I ended up pregnant and unsure of the father. Because I could no longer avoid those burning but muted and pressing questions.

That I didn’t know caused me shame. Embarrassment. Sadness. Fear.

What happened that night? How many? How often? Sure they were nice guys (sorta) but did they intend to get me drunk? (I suspect now that was definitely the case).

They drove me home the next day as promised. It was almost as if the lingerie-clad me and the fully clothed me were separate people – one was a service provided by the other. I even gave them my phone number when asked.

Because I occupied a hollow little world of denial. A vacuum where self-esteem had no foothold, and even knowing that I’d probably done things I wish I hadn’t… I still didn’t tell them “no thanks”.

But somewhere in there, what I did remember was roasting on a slow burn. Eventually, combined with the abortion, that night must’ve formed part of the foreboding sense of doom I felt. The one that caused me to retire from the world of cash for flesh. It seemed that out of nowhere, I felt panicked by the idea of doing any more gigs and I quit.

Later, I was living back at my parents’ place. I’d moved on from stripping to working as an actor in children’s theatre. Highly ironic, I know. The phone rang one day and it was one of them, the bachelor party boys. M must’ve given them my new number. No, I’m sorry. I’m not in that line of work any more… Another cringe of fear, because now I WAS feeling defiled. Just what did they think my services entailed exactly??!

Ah… so interesting how the subconscious harbours those things the conscious mind wishes to ignore. That’s why denial never really works and why we can terrorise ourselves and become our own worst enemy: in the end we can’t escape our own truths, no matter what.

And so it was that the writing of this series helped me to see. Oh! FUCK! Those terrorising dreams where I thought I’d been molested? Well yeah, maybe that did happen but in a different setting… [heart thudding].

Once thunk, that thought rang long and loud in the hall of truth and I have to admit that’s quite possibly how things played out.

There were at least four of them… and I swear that’s all I really know.

[Epilogue]

~Svasti