As a way to throw the throttle of our time machine into reverse, can you guess which one within this bevy of teen-aged girlfriends (all of whom made up my ready-made social circle throughout four years of high school) is me 😊
I have no clue as to why the rest of my club sisters were cut off on both sides of this photo. That was not the case in the original photograph.
Debbie, before her contact lenses, is three rows up on the end, next to the twins, Judy and Jill.
I believe Debbie had nominated me for inclusion in this circle of friends, none of whom had so much as a clue that they’d saved my social life from hanging cliff side following two separate harrowing junior high experiences that made my self respect shrink with fear of early extinction. And at fourteen—having learned nothing, as of yet, about the subconscious portion of our brains functioning as a mental powerhouse that accumulates memories, many of which were too horrible to consciously remember in detail—I had no clue how often that pair of junior high experiences had been empowered to make mincemeat of my self image—for more than 50 years of my life.
As you shall see in stories yet come come, I’ll have much to learn about love and life—which is why personal crises will have slugged me senseless, twice, a decade apart, during my middle years, at which time I’ll have engaged so seriously in therapy as to begin to learn to muster the patience and courage to regain detailed memories that my subconscious powerhouse had secreted away (within tightly locked mental blocks) from the conscious portion of my brain concerning the lasting effects of childhood’s deeply wounded, unhealed, raw insecurities, all of which had played havoc with my adult sense of self-respect until I was diagnosed with PTSD at which time EMDR therapy—encouraging me to engage directly with my intuitive powers—offered my subconscious sound reason to believe that my conscious state of being had begun to experience so many insight-driven growth spurts (each one jump-starting my stalled emotional development) as to release smidgens of horrific memories so as not to unbalance my current sense of personal growth with the emergence of so many latent bouts of spiking anxiety that I’d feel too fearful to continue with my therapy sessions, and with patience, over time, ghost-like skeletons, inhabiting my tightly locked mental closet were intuitively unearthed and consciously purged.
And thus, while working to reassemble the broken shards of my shattered self esteem, did I learn to differentiate between a re-stabilized sense of inner peace regarding my self image and the sliding state of my peace of mind, which tends to feeling aggrieved whenever something that’s currently amiss has need to be resolved.
Good to know that though our brains are complicated thinking, feeling and decision-making devices, we all harbor the capacity to experience flashes of super sensitive insights, leading toward eye opening moments of existential enlightenment, no matter our age, as long as your mind and mine remain open to mustering humility enough to heighten levels of self awareness, which may sting before each next insight-laden growth spurt eases our way toward climbing life’s never-ending, invisible ladder of self improvement, one rung at a time. Hence—doth growing pains precede each next leap of faith that proves necessary as you and I work toward reassembling detailed memories of heart crushing experiences so confounding, during childhood, as to have shattered portions of our budding self esteem.
Life is not a game of Candyland—no matter what kind (or unkind) hand we’ve been dealt, no card takes us straight to the top. Life is more like chess in that there’s always more to learn …
And now tis time to relax my whole mind, feeling self-assured that my intuition will readily release another string of insights highlighting pertinent details about high school—some of which may actually feel brand new to the conscious portion of my brain’s thought processor for this reason—though the conscious portion of our minds can’t remember every detail, our subconscious does.😊
🙋🏻♀️Annie
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