Humbled

I don’t know what to write. I am at a loss. My friend, who subscribes to this blog, tells me that it is some deep shit, that my writings might scare people from this work. I don’t believe her, but I see how the flow of trauma work, which has been going on for months, could seem endless. It does to me. I want to say, I am done with this part. Or, I have dealt with that trauma, done. Period. End of story.

Yet how can I deny the dream. How do I speak of these things?

Since the last retreat, I have had several dreams of blood associated with my period. There is no shame, but there is the blood, and sometimes a lot of it. In the latest, I am with a group of NOE people. I go off to be alone in the bathroom thinking I have to go, but instead there is all this blood. A man comes along whistling nonchalantly and finds me. I think he is waiting for me. I feel no shame in him seeing me there in my blood which covers my legs and hands and is in clots on the floor. I feel no pain. I do not understand what is happening. I step over this. It is messy, a problem to be solved.

Sue, my therapist, and I work the dream from the point of view that there is no shame. Blood is life, passion, primal energy. It is coming from me and He is with me. This all sounds good, right? And I want this. I like that I am feeling no shame. I am OK with my blood.

Later that evening, trying to be back in that feeling of primalcy in relationship to Him as part of my homework from the therapy session, I can’t because an old memory keeps coming in. I see that this memory is corrupting my homework. It is a memory from the place of my sexual trauma during the time I was a runaway and I am at a loss. The next morning it is the same. I do the only thing I can think of, which is to contact my therapist and tell her what is happening. We speak and realize that things are just not lining up. There is no shame in the dream, yet the memory which it is triggering is counter to that. We talk some more and suddenly another memory comes forward.

I am alone in an apartment. I am in terrible pain. I think I am having my period but the pain keeps getting worse. I think I might die, but I don’t know what to do. I ride it out alone I spend hours on the toilet. I feel my body clenching and I keep having waves of pain. When it is over there is lots of blood and the thing that has caused the pain is out. It is small and bloody and shapeless. I flush it away. The terror subsides as I realize I am not dying. Eventually the bleeding stops. I don’t tell anyone. It is forgotten. I am 17 and I tell myself it was a really bad period.

When Sue and I get to this, the real feeling comes in. The pain of this lost moment, the terror of the aloneness.

Sue asks me what it is like now to be in the moment in the dream, covered in the blood with Him there. I can feel the tug of the shame, but it has no hold. Instead what I feel is the huge grief and something else. It dawns on me as I move through this dream how I try to go off alone, but He finds me. He comes to me in that moment and is with me. I am not alone this time. The grief becomes the love remembered. That even in this place, I can be loved. I feel the shock of it in my body. I can’t quite believe it, yet I do. That He cares so much that He would seek me out, make His presence known, be with me, patient, waiting, knowing, loving.


In the Blood