I walk through the garden alone

where the dew is still on the roses…

After a couple of days of pondering, I’ve come to a place that feels like a developing cocoon, beginning to realize the depth of which I will be journeying in the following unprescribed amount of time in therapy.  A question was posed to me about my blogging in depth (in the way I do).  I thought about it, hard.  Many questions arose:  1. Why AM I delving so deep, so publicly.  My original answer?  ••I realize how many other humans in my life, in this world, have experienced the same kinds of pain, unexplained behaviors and abuses.  There are serious reasons why I want to run for office in the future, the main one of which is that sexual offenders and predatory behavior needs to be brought to the bright light of justice.  It will be one of the top things on my agenda when I  am elected – whenever that is.  The shame, guilt and bullshit silence that we are pressured into feeling, the solitary nature that tells us we are all alone is a perpetuated code of conduct that needs to be broken.  Only by being public can we begin to change this.

My other answers: ••After reading about codependent behavior (or self-love-deficit-disorder) and realizing that it is developed BECAUSE of (it’s not my fault, I wasn’t born this way!) erratic, unpredictable, treatment from abandoning parents (for whatever reason: addictions to all sorts of things, substances, gambling… you name it – perhaps your parent is/was codependent themselves, mental instability… ETC ETC) I realized that my own codependent behavior was coming out in unexpected ways now that I’m in this therapy.  I’m now living alone with my cat, back in a community which fosters me, along with being just right down the road from my grandparents.  I KNOW I am not alone.  I know that there are those who would and could do the right thing to protect children from being abused and me from choosing to go dig a hole for myself.  I have a few VERY close friends who check up on me and really want to love me all the time, for who I am.  Nonetheless, those closest often don’t get the deep stories about what’s going on with my therapy until after I’ve shared it with the world.  When I write, it helps me to process.  When I write, I feel like, in an eloquent way, I am describing my experience while acknowledging myself as the experiencer.  However, after pondering this week, another truth has surfaced.  In sharing this journey so publicly, having an unexpected outpouring of response and support (so grateful), I am repeating something that I really don’t want to repeat.  The need for external validation.   In thinking about social media, encapsulating our lives to snippets and things we choose to share, I think that Facebook has imprisoned some of us to use it as a coping mechanism to feel love from others in an increasingly isolating world.  “Who’s liked my post?  He didn’t like my post yet… They love me, look how many people have reacted to my post! ETC ETC ETC…”

I am torn (as this Pisces usually is…) between sharing my intimate journey with myself with all of the people who care to read it, and not sharing it, yet.  The decision I have made is possibly more difficult than anything I’ve done so far since beginning.  In order to, as a dear friend put it, “sit with the discomfort” in order to learn my own truths about what is going on here, I am going to put on hold my week by week sharing and do what I need to do for myself.  Like my friend RN said, she is working on a book dealing with this stuff.  Perhaps I will be interested in doing the same? Perhaps I’ll make a monthly post, carefully chosen and with love of my political intentions of helping my human community feel brave to conquer their own hurtful pasts/presents.  Maybe it’ll only come when I feel like sharing.  To be honest, I feel like sharing all the time, but I am beginning to wonder for whom.  IS it for me? Or is it for everyone else? a perpetuation of codependent behaviors learned as a child that my needs and feelings go on hold for the benefit of everyone else in order to feel needed and loved…. (I know that’s hella round reasoning…)

I haven’t come to a solid decision about what to do.  I don’t have to explain myself – I could just drop off the face of Facebook and blogging with no explanation at all.  But I don’t want to do that, specifically because there are those of you who read this and do feel like you can relate.  You are the reason for this explicative post today.  I care so deeply for the ones whose pain I share, because I empathize and love all of you.  So, I don’t know what’ll happen, but here’s to the cocoon.  Here’s to the butterflies who emerge, in their own time.