The train of thought below was written on Monday, August 5th, to a dear friend who has been patiently awaiting my readiness to enjoy time, together, since I arrived on the coast—
Ever since Thursday, July 25th when Will and I drove from the desert to the coast with Ravi in tow (where we three celebrated Ray’s eighth birthday with extended family), time spent alone is what I’ve craved most. Why? I’d stretched much too far mentally, emotionally and physically during the three weeks that Steven had need of me to take care of our four year old grand daughter in the aftermath of his house flood, and ever since he and Celina (both of whom joined us on the coast several days later) drove back to the desert on Sunday, August 3rd, with Ravi in tow, I’ve listened seriously to my mind, body and spirit’s deeply personal need for peace and quiet. As to why Ravi came with us, everyone in the family, including me, wanted her to be on the coast in time to enjoy her cousin Ray’s eighth birthday party (celebrated on Saturday), and Steven couldn’t leave the desert till Sunday. So I, loving how close knit my family proves to be, chose to stretch my exhaustion beyond the point of rebounding with anything resemblant of ease—yet again. (As if, by locking my intellect behind my wall of denial my think tank can easily forget to remember that the same lesson repeats till our processors wholly absorb it, hook, line and sinker!)
During this past week, while my three sons enjoyed each other and their families at the lovely time share resort where our whole family eagerly convenes, every summer, I made good use of the self assertive portion of my voice, and as everyone observed my exhaustion and respected my need of solitude, I chose to spend most of my time alone. Craving time alone when my family is together is very new to me. But respecting that inner need proved necessary, primarily for this reason: Though everyone is always undergoing some stage of personal transition (for better or worse) I, feeling myself moving through an active state of mental change, have not yet identified which self debasing character trait my subconscious may be in the process of shedding.
Though this unidentified change taking place inside my brain feels somehow distressing, growth spurts, experienced in the past, encourage me to take a leap of faith toward believing that as challenging as this period of transition is proving to be, my host of hard won mental strengths, once fully recharged, will land on both feet in a well grounded placement that is bound to feel as intuitively and thus naturally well balanced as if I was a well practiced Olympiad gymnast, who has challenged my intelligence to achieve a ten after achieving a quadruple spiral through the air.
While undertaking this highly challenging mental feat, I am naturally early to bed, late to arise. I feel resistant to talking or listening and am writing much less than usual. In fact—I’m cocooning.
Makes the intuitive portion of my brain wonder if, at each critical stage of life, the shedding of invisible wings ( with training wheels) must take place before our processors can hope to sprout a mental wing span that’s more expansively resilient to life’s universal adversities resultant of personal growth spurts that prove as classically painful for the adult nervous system to undergo as it is painful for the tender gums of babies to swell while cutting first molars, which, eventually, will loosen up and wiggle around for quite some time before bleeding, during detachment, is complete thus providing space needed for wisdom teeth to erupt through the gums in a classically painful manner, yet again, later on. ... the difference being, that unlike our gums, which tend to be exceptionally sensitive creatures, our brains are equipped with walls of denial, behind which the depths of each person’s host of emotional pains is buried alive, where it stews, silently though fitfully, on. Back burner within the subconscious portion of our minds ...
Actually, while expressing all of this to you, I’ve just clarified a lot for myself concerning what's taking place that I can feel but not see inside my think tank's cocoon. In fact, I wonder if it’s too much to hope that a conglomeration of tensely compressed, deeply repressed emotional reactions stemming from a host of stewing, long lasting frustrations, each of which proves way beyond my control to repair, is in the process of morphing from compressed complacency toward realistic combustibility while my defense system's rebelliousness against revealing the depths of my angst to the conscious portion of my processor readies itself to accept the fact that my power of intuition has determined my readiness to fully acknowledge whatever I cannot change so that rather than freeing unprocessed angst to emerge all at once (like a pot of stew boiling over while the blind, leading the blind, continue to turn up the burner on the stove, notch by notch, I must bide my time until this geyser-like, subconscious release can be calmly, thus accurately, assessed, fury by fury, so that intensely constrained rage does not burst, all at once, through my wall of denial, shattering the conscious portion of my naturally intelligent brain, leaving jagged shards of yesteryear’s unresolved fears to pierce ever more deeply into my wounded self worth before my exhausted inner strengths have been given sufficient time to revitalize. And thus do I give thanks to patience, initially well practiced so as to see myself grow ever more self disciplined so as to discipline my trio of disciples, namely my sons, with creativity leading my mind’s eye to offer up logical consequences injected with healthy doses of loving good humor intact, and thus does my think tank shine insight’s spotlight of valor upon the role played by patience each time my self awareness feels challenged to withstand heightened spikes of anxious reactiveness until a mere mortal like me feels an intuitive sense of mental readiness guiding my host of worn out, slow-to-bounce-back inner strengths to re-emerge from the cocoon in which mental metamorphosis has been taking place, yet again. However, rather than seeing myself as a butterfly, I must be a cat with nine lives, beginning with 'cute as a kitten' until the Grim Reaper saw me evolve into a small scary cat afraid of yesteryear's dark shadows and, most recently, I feel myself morphing into a cat, like Nala, brave enough to have grown so mature as to adventure ever more deeply into the great unknown, thus intuitively venturing away from her ‘pride’ just long enough to listen to the self assertive portion of her voice ascend from her own personal hell once the rejuvenation of her deeply determined host of mental strengths verified which path the next stage of her destined role in history has need to mark as her own ...
And now that the bright side of my imagination is on a positive roll, I can’t help but think wishfully that with the eventual emergence of the whole stormy lot of my deeply repressed furies standing naked before me, each one will evaporate into thin air. Gosh! Wishful thinking aside, wouldn’t a slow release valve freeing a deeply repressed, intensely constrained, utterly congealed conglomeration of inter-related, unprocessed angsts, one by one, prove to be a wholesome change, indeed, for a mind as active as mine (which, as we can clearly see) proves in dire need of relaxing by consciously deciding to offer all of me as much down time as proves necessary to rest if I am to fully absorb the monumental nature of this insight-driven change for the better in my decision-making process so as to head off future episodes of PTSD before my processor passes exhaustion's point of slo-mo return. Then, I signed the text with an emoji heart preceding my name.
Hmmm—I sure hope that most of the text (paraphrased above) is not wishful thinking—oh wait! I just spotted My Fixer reaching for my sunscreen while readying herself to slip into my bathing suit so as to head out to the hot tub overlooking the resort's bright and sunny, yet deeply serene ocean view! Sounds good, right? In fact, I’m about to pull today’s train of thought into a rest station so that the sum of my parts can slide wholly into the water that’s bubbling up in a most inviting way as though warmly welcoming my decision to stop writing in favor of relaxing—
Hey!
Hold the presses!
Tis light bulb flashing time inside my mind!
Insight has just spotlighted this probability—
My first thought (about cocooning while shedding a self-debasing trait) was not my best thought, because rather than shedding a self-debasing trait, the conscious portion of my mind has just landed upon this reality: One of my positively focused traits has been actively gaining strength, and the name of this high self esteeming, self confident trait is my self assertive voice, which in the past could not say no to certain loved ones, because I’d felt that their needs had preempted mine—namely my three sons. However now that each has grown to full-fledged manhood—my vision of my mothering self (which has actively been in flux for quite some time), can clearly see that I’ve been shedding my think tank's idealistic attitude concerning motherhood in favor of expanding my processor's wingspan!
Without a shadow of doubt based in undeserved guilt, ‘tis my time in life to expand my wings so as to offer my spirit the freedom to soar, not above the classic dramas of family life, but high enough to enjoy and re-energize my good health by inspiring my think tank to wholly accept my need to retire The Fixer as well as my Control Freak, who has long been pounding away at my neo Cortex, begging my intelligence to ready itself to admit to need for subconscious release. And as today’s sense of clarity glances reflectively over the past several decades of my life, I come to see that these two traits have comprised my Thing One and Thing Two, who, left on their own, had overwhelmed my peace of mind by sweeping my think tank into the eye of one gritty sandstorm after another, most of which had not been mine to clean up, over most of my life!
In short, as Oliver Livingston Seagull had need to learn—I've consciously known it’s unnecessary for me to lead our flock; however, subconsciously that's not what I'd felt—leaving my peace of mind torn in two. In fact, I had to exhaust, several times, in order to feel that tis way past time for my wings to relax and fall back naturally within the formation, knowing full well, that as hard as the winds blow during my migration toward old age, the minds of my three sons, each heading his own portion of our flock, are as well rooted in family values as their spirits have been set free to scout out the great unknown that lies ahead of each of us as our family flocks together as birds of feather are wont to do. And thus does today's intuitive train of thought spotlight the string of insights, which (given time to process and marinate within the monumental restructuring of this change for the better in my attitude) will refocus my think tank toward consciously and more consistently tracking my mind’s need to relax before exhaustion, sucker punching my mental strengths, frees PTSD to entrap and swallow my intellect's hold on logic into that little house of horrors, where three year old me had mistakenly held my positively focused smile and creative imagination accountable for empowering everyone I'd encountered to join in my mission to overcome their dark sides without expecting anyone else to muster the courage, humility and patient determination to do a whit of internal work necessary to achieve one of life's most arduous tasks. If knowledge is power, and if seeking knowledge concerning the complexity of the human brain is my advocation, then where did I go wrong?
I'm as naive as the next person, who forgets that the scientific exploration of the human brain is in its infancy. I have not studied neuropsychology. I studied communication skills—and I thank my lucky stars for that, because otherwise, the bright side of my brain may never have grown so intuitively inquisitive as to have withstood the emotional pain that accompanies the expansive nature of self awareness gained by developing the mental strengths necessary to communicate openly and honestly with the dark side of my imagination, which has proved as dark, in its own way, to any story authored by EAP. Hopefully, when it comes to scaring myself breathless by darkening my best character traits, I’ll gain control over my imagination before it mistakenly leads me to believe I can read the dark side other people’s minds she never I can barely read my own. And having referred to both imagination and birds that speak aloud, I believe your smarts will follow my drift when I quote the raven: PTSD be gone—FOREVERMORE. (Close enough)
As to whether the probability (I hope) penned above will prove to be a factuality—time will tell. As for now, my need to cocoon while surrounded by my beloved family makes sense! And since today's thought process has made its way through yet another foggy segment of emotional combustion within my brain space so as to spotlight common sense beckoning my think tank to come in for a soft landing, followed by a gentle hug, peace of mind has been naturally restored—at least momentarily.
Seriously—up until today, I’d had no conscious clue that, over this past year, I’ve been working to expand my mindset (wingspan) so as to develop the ability to state (simply, clearly, self confidently and graciously) that respecting my needs as I age is as important to me as satisfying my adult sons’ need of me. I mean what devoted mother says that aloud? The answer to that last question is—a mother who, though devoted to every member of her family, intuitively comes to see that she cannot expect anyone to respect her needs unless she can calmly, patiently and with good nature intact—assertively clarify her needs to one and all—including me—especially my need to recognize when to replenish my energy source, which, with every birthday, runs out of steam more quickly while demanding more downtime to refuel. Speaking from experience, even the white whiskered Energizer Bunny (which had once-upon-a-time twinned with me) has need to be replaced or restored to full capacity upon morphing into a rechargeable variety—and that’s the truth.
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