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Monday, June 9, 2014. It could be that babycare duties rather overwhelm me. Here I am on my second full day away from my grandsons – writing.
The thoughts I am posting here led me to look for this post’s link – which is connected to a concept I have discussed with a friend that he terms TEMPORALITY.
+WRAITH CHILD (Dark Side book 2, Chapter 14)
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“If I actually looked from the outside the way I feel on my insides I don’t imagine I would look human.”
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Now that is perhaps one of the oddest thoughts I’ve had in a while. It was followed by a brief mental allusion to the book,
Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence by Robin Karr-Morse and others
And a desire to search my own blog for the link I just posted above about the time the words “You are a wraith” appeared in my mind although I had no conscious knowledge of what a wraith even was.
A will-o-wisp.
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What would I look like? Ms. Data like Mr. Data from Star Trek – The Next Generation?
I am not really surprised at my “not human” thought. Dissociation and its often accompanying senses of “depersonalizaation” and “derealization” are certainly very familiar to me. Unfortunately so.
It seems in this moment that if I don’t feel real to myself at times I should not look or sound real to anyone else at those times, either. That would only be fair, seems to me.
That way there’d be a lot less confusion where I am concerned. As trauma-altered as my development was, and as trauma changed as I am as a person (Google search recommended here for “stop the storm teicher’s article“), it seems unreasonable of life that to outsiders I look no different from ordinary others. I AM different. (Dr. Teicher explains a lot of this scientifically).
I FEEL different. I even know about these differences by comparing myself to myself — who and how I am NOW to who and how I was through much of my mostly oblivious adulthood.
I had no way, for example, of understanding the impact of the severe child abuse I suffered until someone told me I had been abused when I was 29. I had no idea what being “a victim” even meant. I could not comprehend that I had been abused. Nobody ever told me. Nobody talked about it. I had no points of comparison or frame of reference, no words, no language related to abuse.
So?
Was I not an abuse survivor, not a victim, until I began to learn that I was?
Did what was real to me change? Did I become a different human — before and after?
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Ordinary people know nothing, really, about anyone. Yet as we communicate with one another the truth is we communicate our truths in millions of split-second signals that have nothing to do with words — and usually not even anything to do with consciousness.
(Implicit memories. Buried memories. Body memories. Who says they are silent? Who says the truth of who we are is not vividly apparent?)
We mostly work very hard at pretending these signals do not exist. In other words, people don’t make it a habit “to be real” with one another.
(So — I feel unreal because I do notice the “ignored” real signals?)
These unreal transactions unsettle me. Make me want to run away and hide. Or SHOUT, “What is REALLY going on here?” (In fact, these transactions can make me feel crazy!)
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Very young children don’t know how to mask their feelings or reactions. They have to be taught how to do that. (ASAP?) Young children are real. They live in a very real world.
Mostly adults can hardly wait for them to grow up, to mature, to get civilized. Adults are not comfortable with real in our culture. So we change the nature of reality (or pretend that we do), calling black white and white black and then go on our way.
But nobody could fool Mr. Data. I would think people would feel very safe and secure around him — if he were real. There would be no fuzzy areas. Things would be clear and truthful.
Nobody would have to wonder or be lost in gray areas that don’t need to exist but do — because adults insist not-real is real.
“Are you really happy?”
“Sure I am.”
“Absolutely.”
“Without any doubt.”
“Without question.”
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We don’t walk around telling (mostly) strangers how we inwardly feel. Nobody cares. Messy business. “Don’t tell me your reality and I won’t tell you mine.”
Very neat. Very clean and tidy. (Sterile comes to mind.)
Very efficient. As if we are all Datas?
I don’t wee the honoring of being human in that. The respect….
But —- then —- I really don’t understand this world. Maybe I am one of “the visitors.” A watcher. A listener. An observer. A wonderer and a wanderer.
Which is all just fine as long as I do all in my power to fit in and be like everyone else. Rock no boats. Make no waves. Upset no one.
Ever.
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Here is our first book out in ebook format. Click here to view or purchase –
It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge. Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are welcome.
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Stop the Storm 