It’s bizarre, I’m actually searching for my own suffering, and I can’t seem to find it, and that’s really weird, and a little sad for me too. Because my suffering is a part of me. My “stuff”’ that’s hard to take, that hurts, it’s there, it’s what makes me me. And in this case, it tried to show itself but I wouldn’t let it because I was afraid it would overwhelm me. And now I’m trying to find it, and it’s gone. But it’s not really gone, it’s just somewhere else inside me, hidden, and probably taking on a new shape, one that I won’t recognize, one that’s shrouded in other stuff, one that’s probably more complicated now or even one that’s taken on a disguise in the hopes that I’ll let it in if I think it’s something else.
Basically, what I didn’t want to see was that my mom, is part of me, that she has always been a part of me, that half of my existence comes from her genes. The reason I don’t want to see this is because I am angry with myself for not knowing this, for spending all this time trying to find my mom when she has been inside of me this entire time, that I have been living her, and yet I looked everywhere except inside myself to try to find her. But I’m also scared to see this because if half of me is her and half of me is my dad, then who am I? Where do I fit in all of this? And which parts of me are my mom? How could the person that I manifest each day, that I live and breathe and think, be the very same person I have been looking for most of my life?
And so I think that’s why I want you to experience your suffering when it comes up for you. Because the first time that I realized that half of me came from my mom (I saw myself in the mirror and saw her eyes looking at me), I could have sat with that loss, that fear, that anger, and actually experienced it. And I think that in experiencing it, I would have learned about myself a little more- I might have even begun to see my mom, in myself. But I didn’t. I chose not to experience that sadness. I didn’t run from it, I just closed off from it, protected myself from it, by diverting my thoughts elsewhere and drinking tea. It came up again, but the second time, I actually pushed it away. I was in the bathroom, at a one-day retreat, and I just couldn’t take the time to stop and feel it- I felt like I needed to get back to the group and again, I was afraid of what would happen if I let myself actually experience the loss.
I’m not actually mad at myself for the way I dealt with it each time. I completely understand why I did what I did. The first time, I thought I was being realistic and compassionate with myself around what I thought I could handle. The second time made sense too- I actually thought that I would break down in tears in the bathroom and no one else would have been able to use it until I had worked my way through this seemingly life- altering event for me. But had I known then, that I would be looking for my suffering now, and that I am unable to find it, I would have gladly doubled over in sadness the first time or hogged the bathroom the second time.
I say this because of a couple of things. First, even though there is sadness and loss in experiencing my feelings around this, there was also an opportunity to connect with my mom, or at least that’s what it feels like might have happened had I experienced it when it first came up. But the second thing is where I am at now. I don’t know that I ever will experience that initial suffering that came up for me. I honestly believe that that suffering is now being added on to, morphed, disguised, or whatever. That initial suffering is gone, and not in the way that suffering is gone when you experience it. This is not a lessening or a lightening of suffering, this is a fragmenting of suffering, an occlusion of it, a splintering or even a cancering of it. I feel like that initial feeling- that fear and anger- has replicated itself into a million little pieces and that those pieces, which once were a clear ball of fear and loss have become little cells hiding throughout my body, feeding off of any insecurity they can find, and then growing into something new.
I’m probably being over dramatic here, I definitely tend toward that when something like this comes up for me but still, I want you to know that your suffering doesn’t really wait around for you. If you don’t feel it when it shows up, it might not be there later when you’re ready to see it. Instead of being there, it’s likely to have grown and hidden and you don’t get to find it anymore, it finds you.
Thank you.
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