To clarify my last question/ statement: the process of self actualization, resurrection, recovery, healing- you finding out after all that you were okay, fine and perfect, so to speak the way you were from the very beginning and coming back a full circle to what was there in the beginning. What a journey where we abandon our self denial and attend lovingly- over time- to our self. For me, still, in small steps- an unmarked territiory- an unmarked brian circuitry, science wise.
anita

Dear Jim/Jamie:
I wrote and wrote to you and then deleted, i was getting nowhere. I feel discouraged this evening, slept poorly last night and feeling anxious about sleeping tonight. I feel stuck somewhat. I’ve done a lot of healing and there is still much to do, to live mindfully every moment, almost. To notice the agitations of my mind and quiet them again and again instead of engaging in distressing thinking on top of those agitations. Practice, practice, practice.

About our age, isn’t it interesting how the young people on this forum (hello, young people, if you are reading) have so much distress just like i had when i was young. So much waste, so much pain, distress, disatisfaction in all ages. Here I am not getting anywhere again in my second post to you. I am glad I gave you some hope… You wrote about living timidly. I lived subjugating myself to others and if I could only change that- the humiliation of having put myself in the mercy of others without believing i even had the right to say NO or LEAVE or have self interest or exercise self protection. My mother so subjugated me that I entered the adult world so very handicapped. I can’t believe myh life really did happen to me… And i was blind all these years. I am learning now to SEE. to SEE more of what is out there.

I like it that you wrote that we connected. I still want to connect. i still want to be liked. I am at 54 still the little girl I always was- isn’t it amazing… I am still that little girl.
anita

Dear Jim/Jamie:
I am having a better day today. I slept well. I am so glad that I did- it sure feels good to feel better- goes without saying, yet I do say it. I have my distressing moments today as in any other day. I get distressed and when I do instead of analyzing on and on trying to get rid of the distress via analytical thinking (did not work)- I surround the distress with nothing, with space, with silence. I figured things enough (there is a place to analysis) and now as teh neurons release the distressing juices in my brain (which happens physiologically)- I have to silence those “ripples in the pond” with quiet. Over and over again. I just had lunch and with the severe eating disorders I developed in the last few years (yes…) eating has been involved with anxiety. I repeatedly talk to myself while eating, saying: I deserve to feel pleasure. It is okay to feel pleasure, nothing bad will happen because i am feeling good. Nobody is going to attack me because I am feeling good. Then a few minutes ago- my god, I can’t believe it- I felt love for myself, actual affection for myself. Wow- amazing.

I read about you having been a doormat, a yes person. Sometimes I get so angry thinking about how I humiliated myself, how I disregarded myself. I get angry and I see, NOW, that it shouldn’t have been so. Now that I felt, today, affection for myself, not that I am growing into liking myself- I think: what a shame. It is sometimes overwhelming to think about decades of life spent subjugated, submissive, a nobody in my own mind. Ah, the pain….

How are you doing with that presently? I like you as the “jim/Jamie” in this forum. I like to get messages from you. I like your expressions here, you noticing me, “listening” to me, paying attention. Seeing me. And I welcome you showing yourself to me…I am a safe place for you to do so…
anita

Dear Jim/Jamie:
Sweet Supeman story. You watching it at 60 with the same intensity, big smile is proof, is it not, that the child of those days is very much alive. That child is the part of you that watches the show still, in wonder. You thought at that time, long ago, that superman really did fly, that he could fly.

Free associations in my mind as I type this: I think that I too had wings, that I could fly and then the winges were cut off. Wings that I still need to be free, still need to be in a state of WONDER. Can I (can you…) get them back, get your wings back? I am typing whatever comes to mind… the regret for havinglived a life of fear. Of still living a life of rear. What does it mean not to? What does it mean to me” I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees?” How am I living on my knees now?

I am looking at the trees outside, the sun is already somwhat out, shade and light, lots of green, a mountain behind the trees. I see it every day, often I don’t but it is always there, every day since I live here, it is right there. What does it mean to me to be free? Free of fear?

I wish there was something dramatic I could do. I had this crazy image of you, thinking if I was you, what that dramatic thing would be: running in a public place screaming to the top of your lungs: look at me- I AM Jim AND Jamie. I am Jim and Jamie and I am not afraid! I am not ashamed!

How would it look for me, doing something similar, running in a public place, what would I scream to the top of my lungs? “Here I am. Look at me! See me! I am HERE. I EXIST. I am here! … I MATTER. What I think matters. What I feel matters. I count. I make a difference!”

Of course you may very well be screaming something else other than what I wrote above- if you like the image, what would you be screaming?

My biggest hurt is having lived as if i didn’t matter. Ah, the pain, the humiliation, that self disrespect, self abandonment. Not onlyu did I give up on wings but I gave up on my legs taking me away from humiliating situations (I stayed feeling paralyzed, helpless and worst: as if I had no right and no value justifying my removal from being used like an object by another). To abandon myself, to deny my inherent value to my own self, to step all over myself, so to speak. Ah… never would I want to go back to that.

I am going to stop these thoughts right now… What do you think, Jim/Jamie? I’ll write you later. I am not in my… usual state of mind right now.
anita

Dear Jim/Jamie:
I am touched by you sharing your dream with me, that I may have triggered or encouraged you to share this dream. Although there is much panic in the dream, it expresses your innermost desire, as I see it, the desire to be seen as you are, no longer hiding from that inner voice saying to yourself: you are shameful! Hide! Oh that voice… matched in reality by the people that would indeed look and point and laugh because of your behavior breaking the social conditioning, the social agreement of sorts of what should be.

I remember right now my mother saying about a woman, she said that about that woman only a few years ago, she said: “She is everything (a woman) should be.” I remember that particular woman she was talking about from many years before. I remember that woman being in a house with her son, a 13 year old son. His name was Harley. Everyone left the house and stood outside to allow that woman, Harley’s mother, the privacy everyone, every adult anyway, thought she deserved or should have. Alone with Harley, she was. Outside I stood with the others and heard loud noises. I don’t know what she beat him with but it made a lot of noise, sharp, hard noise, over and over again, something hitting his body very, very hard. ANd i heard him screaming like he was killed.

I have to go now for a walk… finish the point: that woman may have been well mannered, eat nicely, say the right things….

You get my point. what people say should be. Write me again, or I will continue later, amybe tomorrow, come back to this.
anita