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Wednesday, June 4, 2014.  It took being trapped here last winter to get me reading what I consider trash fiction for the first time in my life.  All of the books have been given to me.  Legal thrillers.  Crime thrillers.  My current reading is “The Gods of Guilt” by Michael Connelly, a “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author.”

A few minutes of this kind of reading before bedtime accompanied by Snickers is part of the trance I require to reside in this so-not-ME place.

But occasionally even within such mental blank space of reading I find a sentence or two that wakes up my resonance-within sleeping beauty.  When that feeling dashes through me I pay attention:  Some part of my own reality so deeply embedded in a trauma past has been touched.

I wanted to mention this one — the main character, a lawyer heading to visit two inmates, thinks —

“I knew from prior experience that going into a prison would be exhausting.  It was an ordeal that fully taxed the senses.  Prison sounds and smells, the drab gray steel set off by the garish orange uniforms of the incarcerated, the mixture of desperation and threat in the faces of the men I’d come to visit — it was not a place I ever wanted to spend an extra minute in.  I always felt as if I were holding my breath the whole time I was inside.”  pages 206-207

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Some main part of myself woke up and paid attention to these words as they bolded themselves and jumped off of their pages.  I KNOW THAT FEELING!

Not only do I know it — no matter what is happening around me I usually feel this feeling — nearly all of the time.

I have in the past year or two come to experience this feeling of being trapped in a body in a life in circumstances that don’t seem to suit me literally as it makes it hard for me to BREATH.  This is a very powerful body-based, visceral sensation that is almost like a claustrophobia of being alive.

Helluva deal!

Of course it anchors into 18 years of torture and confinement.  But it also ties in with a lot that has followed/led me through my adult life.  I have never quite been able to “figure out what is going on” so that I can extricate myself from any situation that makes me feel uncomfortable — change settings, so-to-speak — dive under the ice and come up somewhere else where there might be an opening that leads me to a place in which I might feel “better.”

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What is comfort?

What is comfortable?

I believe for early traumatic abuse survivors, especially for those of us who were traumatized by our attachment people from birth, the inability to “self sooth” follows us forever in this lifetime.  That sense of being SAFE and SECURE, of being calm in a state of comfortable comfort, escapes us.

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I do not like Fargo, North Dakota – as you readers here understand.  Yet I am 100% sure I will not be leaving here before another winter in hell arrives.  Yes, there are some really tough choices that have led me to this decision.  I have no money to leave.  I am not willing to dump everything I own to head off back to my high desert comfortable sanctuary place broke and homeless again.

I also believe that this next year is critical in the development of both of my little grandsons.  I have something critical to offer them of significance to their development on the positive side of the scale of their lives.  I will not abandon this task I am committed to finishing.

So here I sit in a CITY without a view, without open wild spaces, feeling crushed as if I am in the prison Mr. Lawyer character described.  I know that feeling.

Sure, there is goodness here.  Much goodness.  But I am one for letting the big circle of life appear in all its splendor — both in its joys and in its difficulties.  I AM making personal sacrifices to be here.  That is a fact.  Goodness happens, as well — but all happens together as a ONE THING called “life.”

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono (we are still waiting to hear that he has accomplished this job – I think we will have to find an alternative!).  Click here to view or purchase –

STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site

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