dead ends
I heard a voice, and that voice spoke of telling my emotional truth. Just my emotional truth. So, here it comes:
I am exhausted.
Emotionally drained when I think about myself and where my life is now. I feel that, again, I am stuck in that Dead End - that card keeps on coming up for me - swimming or drowning in that force that doesn’t want me to move forward. The last page of the last chapter of the only book you own. This is an End and I don’t know where to go next, what to do, and I feel trapped. I feel I have tried different avenues and none worked. The card suggests that there are doors all around me, but I don’t see them, I don’t find them so I feel stupid because I don’t see them and I feel stupid because I don’t get the message and I feel stupid for trying over and over again. And I feel stupid because I know that there is an answer within me I am looking for, but I don’t know what questions to ask and I know I am just deflecting.
Stupid, stupid me.
Kim suggests I listen to Giving Up by Donny Hathaway so I listen and listen and still don’t get it. Again, me in this circular dead end. I am still fighting a battle that is not taking me anywhere and maybe does not even belong to me, pegging away and being as stubborn as I can be. Instead of letting go, instead of just letting go. I am constantly feeling like an extra in the movie I feel I should be the protagonist. I feel there is a hidden message, a small doorway for me and then I will turn into Alice and everything will be clear. But for now, I feel ignored, overseen, not listened to, surrounded by people with no empathy. I feel I am giving and giving and giving and I get nothing in return. The damnation of being a therapist where you don’t get what you are trained to give out, and have no patience to wait for the others to learn.
The cards today answered a specific question: what are my strengths, what have I been given. One card was this Dead End which I should start seeing as a tool instead of a hindrance, as one of the things I can offer, and find refuge in. The other card showed me that my strength lies in that place between life and death, the real and the unreal, my own Dantescan limbo where I suffer all the things and the roles I could have been but haven’t.
Here is the original version of Canto 4 of the Inferno as recited by Vittorio Gassman:
There I can see my life from the point of view of eternity and life-less-ness. There I can say all I want, imagine anything, forgive the unforgivable, see the unseen, and let go of all that hurt me. In there, my oppressive Dead End becomes spacious, open, rich of opportunities, all doors and all threads. In The Bardo there is a message for me from beyond: I only have to listen.
Kim here suggests that I read Lament of the Dead by James Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani. That book is a collection of conversations about Jung (again… again… and my 1000 f*g exclamation marks!) and his Red Book and Book of the Dead: unless we come to terms with the dead we simply cannot live, and that our life is dependent on finding answers to their unanswered questions. Their unanswered questions. I am wondering what George’s unanswered questions were… (I write about George in my book, here)
The third card was The Lover: the heart, the devoted, the grateful. The one who reveals beauty via art and music and sensuality. The Lover is fully present, in awareness, with no rules and no expectations The question is if I can find the Lover in myself: can I love myself enough to stop telling me how stupid I am? Can I feel, for myself, for Matilde, this unconditional love and acceptance I feel for example for my clients? Or my friends? Can I find within me Aphrodite? This Goddess of Love and Beauty and Creativity wants me to love again and by doing so I am exposed to hurt and pain and betrayal. In there, the instinct is to look for closeness and be filled with desire. This means that I will also deal with trust, which is so easily broken. Aphrodite is the force of change, the creation after passion and intense study; it’s the act of rapture in writing and making art.
Maybe part of my journey now is to come to terms with my Dead End, which is where I will find Love for myself, and these thorns surrounding me will turn into a space full of opportunities.
The recurring theme is the reconciling of opposites, of flipping things around and see things from a different perspective, the two sides of the same coin: my changing the approach to work, my mixing sweet with sour and hot with cold, my unifying writing with being an Artist, Italian with living in the UK, my desire for solitude while being faced with people all the time, my yearning for visibility while being the Invisible Woman stuck in her own Dead End. Jung talks about becoming one with your shadow and completing this individuation process of reconciliation. Run towards the part of yourself that feels uneasy, Matilde. Maybe I should sit in the middle of my Dead End and there face my shadow.
Last time I faced a similar situation, it was the beginning of 2018 and I was at the very deep end of a horrendous period of loss, mourning and endings. I devoted 90 days to the practice of chanting a mantra in order to understand, in order to face my own fundamental darkness. During those 90 days, I wrote Rebeltherapy (here) and I shed a part of me. Maybe I should think about doing something similar by facing my own fieriness and creativity and lust for life by retreating into my Dead End.
In the meantime, TAW it is!
If you haven’t done it yet and you would like to join me, pls check my first post here and follow me on FB here for tips, hints and to share your experience.
Sending you all good vibes!
onwards + upwards ♡
mandi!
mx