Big, red square

This morning, before I started writing the first bit of the day, I turned on my little radio and the DJ said the title of a CD someone had won: “Do you want the truth or something beautiful?” Fun-ny. Happened quite a few times these past couple of days.
Been walking a lot too. There’s grief now. This afternoon it was anger, fuelled by the upside down society, burglars being protected by law against the people who’s houses they break into.
Whatever. At least it was a good reminder why waking up is a sensible thing to do.
Now I’m scared, for my sister and her kids, and because I don’t know what to write. I’m scared I will stop writing again and pick up the process later. I don’t want to go on at a later date. Feel lost. Confused, foggy. Please let me go on. Please. Even though this is a process of negation, it’s the only thing I can hold onto; the writing, the focus, the drive, the energy. It feels good. I’m in my element when writing furiously. And even though it’s scary sometimes to be brutally honest, at the same time it makes me feel lighter, open.

I find it hard to concentrate at the moment.
When I hear a song on the radio that I like, when I watch TV, when I’m doing something; I’m asleep. Almost instantly. There was this thing on the news that got me worked up and I walked along fuming. Couldn’t stop myself by reminding myself to observe. It’s the automatic pilot thing. Horrible, that. Going somewhere and not remembering how you got there, because you were on automatic pilot, like a machine. Going through life like a robot. I feel myself getting sucked back in, losing awareness. Back and shoulders are hurting viciously and that’s not helping my clarity of mind either. Dozy got his hands on me. Still hard to discern when to give in and accept a setback or when to struggle and keep writing until clarity emerges once again. Maybe it’s the sadness I feel that’s mucking up my vision.
Feel listless, tired, uninspired.

Ok. Something’s coming. There’s a subject on the program and it’s a biggy. Men. As a teenager some woman (mother of a guy I had a fling with) interpreted my natal chart for me; she said, somewhat taken aback, it was possible for me to become enlightened in this life if I would manage to overcome this big red square on the chart. What is it? I asked her.
"Men."
Didn’t come as a big surprise, but to have it that dominantly present on my life’s blueprint was unsettling. “You have a lot of problems with men.” She was not wrong there.
As a small kid I escaped rape for the first time (not the last), when I was playing in the park. First time my intuition saved me. My mother got herself a boyfriend who had a lot of pent up rage which he generously shared with us and especially me, for some reason. He also liked ‘jokes’, like pulling open the door to the shower when I was in there. Or lying on top me, tickling me. Which was just touching since I wasn’t ticklish.
Then the wonderful influence of my father, who made me feel I was never good enough and loved telling stories about other people’s kids and how well they were doing, how well-behaved they were and how smart. Who hit me in the face and kicked me when I was down, literally, on the floor. The men who started touching me when I didn’t want them to, lots of them, the boyfriends I had sex with because that was supposed to happen, or so I thought. It hurt so much. Sex felt like someone was sticking a knife between my legs. I let myself be used in spite of the excruciating pain because sex was all I had to offer, that’s how worthless I felt. A couple of abusive boyfriends, some escapes from rape and the one I didn’t escape, but came out of alive. That about sums it up.
So, lots of work to be done.
The one that still makes my blood boil is my mother’s ex-boyfriend. She went to his place once to have her car fixed (he’s a mechanic) and I was visiting her at the time so went with her. He made a demeaning ‘joke’ about me again, smiling at me mean-spiritedly with his beady little eyes and I saw nothing had changed. On the wall were photographs and I happened to see a picture of him as he was in the years when he was sort of living with us; it made sense for me to have been really scared of him as a little girl and his favourite target; he looked like a cruel Bud Spencer with calculating eyes.
He’s a mean man who thinks much of himself, considers himself to be a guru, a real wise man, he was always ‘educating’ my mother on the wisdom of the world. “Everything is sex.” “People who don’t learn get cancer.” Pearls of wisdom like that. Screaming in my face the next moment. Yeah, a real wise man, very enlightened, the women he cheated on my mother with thought so too, all five of them. A real prince of a man. The funniest part about all of this is that they still keep in touch and he still visits my mother and has coffee with her, sharing his wisdom and insights.
Wow, this really helps, just writing about him makes him smaller. He’s pathetic. The one who really was enlightened - who had been his teacher and became a friend of my mother’s – had told my mother that this man would never learn. She’d still hang on his every word though. I wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley, I wouldn’t want to run into him in a crowded street in broad daylight. But who knows, maybe now he wouldn’t have that much power over me anymore. Can never tell til it happens, can you.

Not much autolysis tonight, but that will pick up when it does.