Needy Child

Are what are inside me. What I am. I realize this. I see it, I feel it, I taste touch smell hear myself as a scared child in need of an overwhelming amount of love. I have just started to reconnect with a very terrible dark secret of my past, of which I have allowed only a few memories to survive to surface every now and again. Moments when i retreat and turn to stone to block myself from the pain, the anger, the frustration, the shame, the embarresment and the terrible awful fear, that if someone finds out, I am ruined. Because I am shamed.
I have continued to shame myself over the years of my life, because its the coping mechanism I have developed, a way to protect myself from the fear and hurt someone else inflicted on me. I am a needy child yearning for oceanic proportions of love, because this is when I stopped developing emotionally and began the retreat away from feelings. I have memories of food being comfort from such a young age...little did I understand where they came from, the root of this disorder, that has saved me, and in the process, maimed me.
Sitting across from my brother playing a game of war on his computer, I am in love. With my family, with my friends, with a mate of my soul I could have never imagined, and who is every thing I ever dreamed of. He is kind, generous, witty, disarming with his self deprecating humor, observant, passionate, and deeply loving and dedicated to the relationship between us. There has been banter of husband and wife and babies and children and a life together full of adventure and travel and the best of friendship...
And as this great love opens me up, I see myself begining to cling to it, for life support. As it both protects and lifts me away from my self-defense mechanism against emotions and feeling-out-of-control, itself becomes what it saves me from. Ever so carefully I have to nurture, with the utmost care and thought, our love to be Our Love. Not a stand in for something I have used to hide behind, probably for more than the 5 years I have considered it as my mantle. Probably since I was about 5 years old. And I was sexually abused by another young adolescent. My brow is deeply furrowed and my jaw set as I write this. Recently, last week, I shared this for the first time with another human being. Who held me close and tight and murmured soothing words as I pushed my clenched hands against my scrunched face, and sobbed. Two men played bocce ball on the sand in front of us and behind them the bay of ocean waters gleamed with peaceful energy of pre-sunset light. My chest was so painfully tight and it felt like a huge weight was pressing against me. Then, after a few moments, it was gone- and I felt like a shell. Mouth gaping open slightly, I stared at the objects and colors around me, seeing them and yet unobservant of their tangibility. Sense of me in space returned, and I felt immediately uncomfortable in my own body. Pulling at the ends of my sleves, up over my wrists, over and over, tugging at my skirt, wanting to stand up and keep walking along the cement walking path. I managed to sit a few minutes longer, nervously jittery in conversation about what had just fallen from my lips, torn from my tormented soul. We stood, this dear friend and I, and continued our journey, along the water, back into the city and a Starbucks for welcome hot black brew, sat a while to watch the cotton candy colored sunset sky, a dirty shirtless man with a gilette razor in his back pocket sat on the stairs next to us, decide against catching the bus, step in a grocery store to buy salad supplies, wait in line like life is normal, continue walking to our destination, and seperate. I feel elated at this point, genuinely grateful to have such a person in my life that would listen and accept my deep pain with such mercy, and hope. Before the beach, we had attended an AA meeting, that had me choking back tears at a couple moments in a couple shares. Those who shared sounded heartfelt and sincere about their recovery, and the light at the end of the pain shrouded journey they had taken, and were still walking, with head held high.
I have a blessed life. And I pray to let it glow, let it rage, with as much joy and love as it can ever imagine flowing through it. And to do so, embrace deep pain and conront fears to open myself to pain and terror, must I go through.
This is a first step...a step I would never have thought to take, never have understood I needed to take, unless I had started the 12 steps of a spiritual program through OA. I have fallen wayside from the program and fellowship...and maybe now I understand how much I need spiritual guidance and moral consolation and growth. To be surrounded by people, to share with fellow souls, whatever their demons or sorrows, we are all alike, all connected in our struggles against ourselves. Oceans and bundles and caverns and valleys and starry skies and arms and hands and couches and beds and tables and eyes and ears and mouths full of Love are what we need. So much so much so so so much love. This sounds better in my head than how it looks in repeating black letters on the glowing screen, yet its what I feel deep in my heart. I just watched a little of Young Victoria on streaming video online, so i feel my face as Emily Blunts pondering eyes and brow and closed mouth. Well, if thats what it takes to get this out of myself and onto page, i am better for imitation. Tired eyes and face muscles, hot skin and strained lower back muscles, holding against the stretch of my abdomin, enlarged by an overfull belly. Again and time again, this has happened, will happen again. And each day I learn something new and useful against my retreat, and understand it is futile to harbor resentment against myself. For there will be nothing yet myself, at the end...I go to wash, rest and pray to be a bearer of great Love as well as a deep harbour for the Life it gives. Thank you for my life, Thank you for Love, I pray to lead a compassionate and humble life. Please replace vanity with gratefulness, selfcenteredness with a sense of belonging to something greater, selfishness with a sense of self worth. I pray for Love to fill me, and consume me.