saudade (part 5)

I have learned in my life journey that there are no coincidences in life. The relationships we choose to engage in represent mirrors to our souls. If we have the courage to see what is reflected back to us in our behaviors and reactions to the other, we can unveil some latent part of us that needs to be seen and heard. In May Pang's Why We Need Bad Things to Happen to Us, she highlights the universal truth that we can only appreciate who we are today if we know what the journey that got us here, and with the Taoist principle of duality, one can only appreciate the light, if he/she knows the darkness.

Working through my fears of 'unwantedness' or 'being hidden' has manifested throughout my life in so many layers like the Matryoshka doll (saudade (part 4)), chipping away at different facets of the same theme. While I thought that they were behind me (hide 'n seek, full circle (part 2), full circle (part 3), full circle (part 4), full circle (part 8), and lost 'n found), it came roaring its ugly head. Perhaps the random contacts from two recent exes who kept stoking these themes throughout our relationships should have been the portent that told me to brace myself. Yet doing things differently this time, and handing the keys to my inner demons to someone had me foolishly believing I had guarded myself from them coming back up. Needless to say, I was not prepared. I found myself curling up as that little girl again. In the cocoon of my own bed, I knew I needed a little miracle as Marianne Williamson says and shift my perspective (saudade (part 4)). 

I wanted to run. I wanted to see it as a sign that this journey, while short-lived, had served its purpose. Yet I knew that it was that part of me that had reservations for starting this journey in the first place, and where there is fear, it is a place I need to walk in. Within my glance was the box of curated items representing the hope of where the journey could go with intentional exploration and connection at a deeper level, and in that moment, the miracle in shifting my perspective had me realizing that I needed to make a different choice than running. As my friend recently reminded me (spiritual masters and saudade (part 4)), elevating one's energy/vibrations isn't about who you attract but what you're attracted to, and the people with those negative energies will always be around us...how we react to it is the choice for us to change our pattern(s). Rather than choosing to lick my wounds and becry the supposed retraumatization, I realized that this was just as much about my triggers as it was his.

While I thought overcoming my ego and reaching out to resolve things when I was the one who got hurt was the toughest challenge, it turned out being ignored and trivialized steeled my resolve that there was more to this than met the eye. Luckily, I had another incident early on as a frame of reference to how he handles situations and the drastic difference in the two reactions solidified my knowing that something else was going on with him that perhaps he himself wasn't aware of, as hurt people hurt others despite their best intentions.

Yet, there is a learning to be had in any negative experience, and as Pang noted, one of the outcomes when bad things happen is that it can result in 'serendipitous discoveries'. I did learn more about myself this weekend. Like how I was surprised to learn that one of my love languages is touch, something I was deprived of in childhood (saudade (part 2) and modern love), I unpeeled another 'layer of the onion' in my draw to shibari and/or BDSM. What I had thought was driven by an opportunity to relinquish control to someone else, the duality of someone who has had to be independent and responsible her whole life (ftale) may be more along the path of where full circle (part 9) was taking me and why I still struggle to receive without feeling the need to reciprocate or trusting that there are no conditions in the purity of the gesture (blossoming and surrendering to the unknown). In the moments that the rope is binding me like a kiss or a hug or with the pleasurable pain of the flog, I can surrender to trusting that someone is finally going to take care of me and has my best interest at heart.