To my soldier

Why is the pain so sharp?

I wanted to be the opposite of her

Big where she is small

Believing when she is cynical

To show when she hides

To be brave where she backs away

I remember when I felt the most alive

Is when I was the opposite of her

I can let go of the bitterness

Where she cannot 

She tells me to run far away from home

And don’t ever look back

Don’t ever think of her again

I was so lost in my pain, I was starting to think that I was lost for good, that I would never be saved. But I thought that as long as I could believe you cared, that I could see the caring inside the strange and confusing and distorted way you show it, that if I could be cared for and believe I was worthy of it, then I will be fine.

It’s frustrating isn’t it? The more you try to protect yourself the more you get hurt. You try to control how I interact with men and who interacts with me, but it only makes me choose other men. You try to feel secure in your family relationships but you only get more rejected and used. You try to be secure with money only to lose it. You try to protect yourself from betrayal only to get betrayed. it’s frustrating because you tried so hard and worked so hard and yet you see other people around you not trying to be secure and living a more secure life, and no one taught you what you’re doing wrong.

The universe doesn’t respond to your asking for security. It’s responding to your emotion. You don’t feel secure so you desperately ask for more security. It’s in the feeling of lacking security, of needing something you don’t have, of believing that if someone or something outside of you doesn’t come to save you then you yourself are not safe. It’s the belief that you are not enough to create your own safety. 

People who believe they are safe do not seek more safety. They seek risk and adventure to balance out their boredom.

Safety is an emptiness, a void. Safety is what is not there. Safety is sitting at home when your home is not on fire. Safety is a measure of all the things that aren’t happening. You love creating danger because the moment you can solve the problem, you can witness your own ability to save yourself. But you don’t trust in its existence so you continue to demand proof from yourself. 

Your father wound means that your relationship to your own agency, your own ability to create safety: physically emotionally and financially, is distorted. Essentially it was stolen from you. It doesn’t mean you are not safe with yourself but it means you believe you aren’t. But you were able to recover financially from losing your job. Your father didn’t protect you then, not your sister, not me, not your friends, you did. Not even the person who gave you the job bevause he could have given it to someone else. And you’re able to evoke loyalty in me because you yourself are so full of it, so full of devotion, that when you stop trying, it radiates out and attracts it.

There is a powerful energy of fear from your father and his father and it deserves reverence and awe and respect. Like gods of death and war and suffering. There is energy there that is radiating. I think true mastery of the physical world and being a true protector means to control and guard these energy sources, and you decide how to transform that energy of fear into its other forms. Because pain is simply infinite energy.

I thought I was powerless, as a child. But when she hurt me I chose not to turn completely bitter and hurtful. I chose not to hurt other people in return. I chose to play and laugh and find happiness and meaning in my own way. This was agency, this was a choice. This is the power that matters, even when we as humans aren’t strong enough to fight back. And this is why she hated me more and more, even as she was hurting me, I reminded her of the qualities that she didn’t have. My kindness reminded her of her meanness. Because if I turned mean like her, if I was weak like her, she would have been satisfied and stop attacking me. Probably we would be mean and bitter together, judging and bullying other people, bullying my dad or my brother.