May 2008 - I am reacting to my husband. I believe he is angry at me for not having enough work, for not planning and making dinner, for not helping with the burden of the garden. I feel the fear, but I jump to the projection that he is angry at me. If my work would just pick up, or if I could scrounge something up, anything. I won’t buy anything for myself. That’s it. Or, we’ll eat cheaper, or I won’t challenge his ideas for fixing up the house, or step into his relationship with our son. I know—I’ll plan dinner all by myself, something tasty that he’ll like. No, wait, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll . . . . I CAN FIX THIS! I CAN BE BETTER! I CAN PLACATE THE ANGRY BEAST AND KEEP HIS LOVE. He will be happy, then, and I will be . . .
. . . a whore.
All my life I have been a whore to the needs of others, especially my mother. Unable to bear the terrible fear that filled my young life to bursting, I ran around and tried to make things better. My mother was deeply unhappy and afraid, but it looked like defensiveness and anger at strangers. With my five siblings and me, it looked like a constant, panicked annoyance. If we walked into the house with muddy shoes, she might scream as if the world were ending. We tiptoed around her rage, her quick, biting remarks. For my part, I took on the mothering she couldn’t handle. She was particularly hateful to my younger sister, so I befriended her, shielded her, and yes, loved her. Because I had love. . . but it was quickly disappearing into self-hate and the pride I would develop to shield myself from that hate.
I did the dreamwork for years before the issues of my mother were revealed. Only when my sister entered the work and described her relationship with my mother did Marc realize that something was very wrong. Could she have had such a terrible mother and I, the opposite, a mother I felt close to, with whom I even shared my spiritual life? What was happening?
What was happening was that I was the perfect whore—compliant, selfless. I could be whatever you wanted me to be. Brave? That’s me. Intellectual? I can do that. I was born with unending resources—intelligence in particular could take me a long way toward impressing relatives, my parents, college professors. I was also sensitive to others. I knew what they needed before they did. I learned to say just the right thing to ingratiate myself to them—friends, strangers, it didn’t matter. Insightfulness was the coin of my realm and it bought me the affirmation and admiration I had always mistaken for love.
Dream:
I am a girl and there is a twitching torso of a man on the floor. I know my mother tried to kill him, but he is not dead yet. My father instructs my brother to insert the knife just so in the neck to finish him off. Blood spurts out when my brother does this and I hand him a towel, terrified that the blood will stain the carpet and incite my mother’s wrath. In some deep recess of myself I am horrified by the whole thing, but all I can do is try to help with the blood.
This is a picture of my childhood. Of my horror and terror and complicity. It would seem easy to walk from this into the arms of the Beloved, who has come in my dreams with tenderness and acceptance, whom I crave with a wild desire. But it has not been easy. Over and over again, I step away from the dark mother in my psyche toward His love, only to step back once the terror returns and the trauma of my childhood reawakens. It takes only a small thing—my husband’s dissatisfaction, or an unexpected bill—to turn me from my Beloved’s gaze to the managing behaviors that I developed in childhood to have some sense of control. Caretaking, yes, but also defensiveness, aggression toward the vulnerability of others (spoken with a smile—“just joking”), an insane compulsion to control, withdrawal, judgment.
My fear is my gateway. That is where He waits to welcome me, in my vulnerability, in my sorrow, in my passionate joy. When I can bear the fear, stand and wait, my Beloved is there, loving the small child that is my soul self, who knew her family was not safe, who loves with a devotional heart.
* * *
All my life I have been looking for God. I learned to play the guitar at 12 so I could sing the songs that awakened my heart. (Sadly, then, I played them for others to awaken their hearts instead of my own.) I was an English major in college because literature was the only place I saw anyone speaking the truth (When one of my professors assumed I would be a teacher, I said proudly, no, I was studying for the sake of studying. She almost swooned with admiration.) I could feel God in nature, so I hiked a good portion of the Appalachian Trial (not many are unimpressed with that). I sang gospel music to feel the power of God, becoming a director at times and slowly realizing that I was giving myself away there as well.
Even in the dreamwork, I advanced quickly to a position of leadership because of my “depth” and competence. It turned out, I was really good at dropping into a place of feeling, too, and as soon as I was there, the demon voice was whispering in my ear: “Good, this will really help everyone; they will think so highly of you.”
Every step I took from my heart I allowed the inner demon to co-opt—my gifts, my longing, my devotion were all, ultimately, for others, or to feed the puffed-up demon of pride that had taken up residence in my psyche to protect me from the pure, unbridled, unprojected fear that was the path to God after all.
All this time, the Beloved I have known since childhood has not left me. The God I have been chasing has never been away. Only waiting for me to see that I cannot be the demon’s whore and feel His unending love at the same time. As it turns out, the dreamwork offers me what I have always needed and lacked, the most terrifying thing of all—my little girl heart. This gift is for me. My life is for me. His love is for me.
When I am His, I dance with ecstatic joy at the revelation that I can have my life back, that it’s all FOR ME! When I am the demon’s whore, I cower . . . or I strut, to hide the fact that I’m cowering. Either way, I give my little girl heart away.
My Beloved tells me:
When you feel panic, it’s YOU! Before it jumps to shame or persona. She’s right there, the girl I love, the tears, the passion, the one you were when you wept for love of your boys this morning. It’s a question of staying very close to yourself, very small—with me. From there it all drops in, endlessly in, to the huge truth of love and heartbreak, the heartbreak you have learned to love. It drops in! Don’t you see? You are birthed inside; you go the other way—inside-out, if you will. Out is an illusion. You already know this, the vastness of your love inside, how it spills out then. You are love. How else can you be? Why quibble? Open your mouth and let me feed you