Seeing Oryx for the first time in Eight Months
"My mentor" I called her. Inwardly, I thought of her as a friend. Oryx, a strong woman - one which I loved. I was terrified of seeing Oryx again on many levels, but over the months, that terror died down into mild nervousness.
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For the first time in eight months, I saw her on July 24th 2015.
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I was visiting Hare and her boyfriend on their 'homestead' on the Eastern coast. Hare brought Paladin and I to a class she was teaching on emotional processing at an Eco Village. (Not to be confused with the Eco Village that Otter lives at, which is only three hours away from Snowland. This Eco Village is more like ten or twelve hours away from snowland.)
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Oryx didn't attend the class, which slightly puzzled me, but she was there at the village.
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Despite eight months apart, she wasn't warm toward me. Her hug seemed simultaneously genuine and curt. She proceeded to talk to Hare, who she talks to all the time, and made no attempt to include me in the conversation. I had my laptop before me and didn't take it too personally, but in retrospect that didn't seem right.
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Oryx said, "So what's been new with you two?"
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Hare said, "Paladin needs to process."
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"He does," I agreed.
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Oryx led into one, beginning with, "If you feel your body, now, breathing deeply, what do you notice?"
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Her voice was firm at first, as it usually was. As she went on she became more and more gentle. Paladin, as usual, spoke very quietly.
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I reflected that eight months ago I would have moved closer to make sure I could hear every bit of it. Yet now, I didn't need to do that. Why? What has changed? I asked myself, hearing their murmurs in the background.
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I realized that we had "processed" a lot together in the intervening time. It was no longer this coveted thing that I desperately wanted more of. I felt more secure in my connection to Paladin.
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I'm glad she is being so soft, accepting and kind with him, I thought. He needs that.
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An hour or so later Hare asked me how I was doing.
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"I have the munchies," I said.
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"Is that a process needing to happen?" Hare said.
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I didn't deny it.
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"Sounds like someone needs to process," Oryx said.
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I felt uncomfortable. I had gotten so close to Oryx and Hare through the shadow work we'd done together. We'd taken the light of consciousness into the shadows of our unconsciousnesses together and it had been very bonding. Then, Oryx broke my trust. I still hadn't forgiven her. She still hadn't apologized.
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Over the course of the eight months I had processed it, cried about it, gone bumbling around my unconscious trying to heal the hurt she had caused me. The truth was, I was still hurting inside over Oryx. I had felt so close to her. How could she not have apologized? How could she be so uncaring, so distant?
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Twenty days previously, while saying with Heron and Lilac I had written Oryx yet another letter that I hadn't sent:
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Dear Oryx,
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We are one. You believe that, right? I do too. On some levels, at least. Obviously, much of me does not believe it, because if it did, then I could walk on water, levitate, and make pomegranates appear whenever I felt so inclined. But conceptually, intellectually, we both believe we are all one, yes?
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In a universe where you and I and everything else are all part of one being, your wants are my wants, and my wants are your wants, and the wants of everyone else are our wants, and our wants are everyone else's wants. We feel powerless to these wants when we feel that others must fulfill the wants, but we feel like it is impossible to get others to fulfill those wants.
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As a child I was lonely. I wanted others. I needed others. I was powerless to create companionship. I cried, but mommy didn't come.
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I've grown up. I know how to get the connection and companionship I want. But I still feel powerless to get it. I feel like I have to get it for myself, but I am not separate from others. I want connection with myself, but I am others. Getting connection with others is getting connection with myself. Another person fulfilling my need for connection is me fulfilling my need for connection.
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I have the need for connection and compassion. It is a need because I perceive it as a need. It is a need specifically because I feel powerless to it. I feel no ability to make the need go away. Wishing it away doesn't work. Positive focus on not needing it is impossible, because it feels like a lie. There is no "fake it until you make it." There is only gratitude for the closest you are to what you want, and that manifesting something that is slightly closer to what you want.
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I also have the need to feel like I can completely trust myself with others. Without this feeling of trust, I can not feel the companionship and connection that I need.
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In order to feel trusting, there has to be a mutual feeling in the relationship that each member of the relationship will meet their own needs to the best of their ability, and be honest about their needs, and share what they'd like from the other member, and also, that they will trust that each other's wants and needs are completely valid. For trust to exist in the relationship, each party must validate the other party's emotions.
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It was brilliant of you to identify 'wanting' as an emotion. Feeling 'wanting' as an emotion is incredibly powerful. Thank you for that. Really and truly, thank you, thank you, thank you for that!
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My trust of you had become so complete last autumn that I shared anger with you transparently. That is huge. Anger is one of the most "unsafe" emotions for me. I expressed anger toward you. In response, you were angry back. Your anger felt rejecting to me. Your fall in the stairway felt like it was my personal fault. It reinforced the idea that anger is dangerous. "Anger is not safe," I felt. It especially reinforced that my anger is not safe with you. I felt shaken and betrayed. I felt so deeply hurt and wounded that I completely closed off from you.
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I had to close off more cleverly than ever before. My ego enjoyed the challenge. "How can I play the game of pretending nothing has changed? Oryx is smart. She is clever and quick and perceptive. She'll only buy it if I'm really convincing. I have to smile in the same way. I have to keep my forehead smooth of wrinkles. I have to move easily. I have to watch the tone in my voice. She'll catch any hint. Am I powerful enough to completely hide myself from her? Can I learn from her still, and yet hide in her presence? I can do it. I can and I will."
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My ego loved the challenge and thrived on every little success. Every moment I held a straight face was a victory. Every smile I sent your way was a victory. I felt, "She betrayed me. But she doesn't know she even hurt me. She can't see my wounds. She thinks everything is fine. Well, whatever. I win. I win so thoroughly that I don't even need her to know that I win. So there. Whose the bigger person now?"
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I felt petty on a level I had not felt since I was a child. I felt cruel and angry. The pain of that betrayal was very, very deep. I had never opened myself up to trusting someone so completely who I was not sexually intimate with. In fact, most of those I've slept with never had so much of my trust. You and Hare were the first in my life outside of the four people I call my "loves" to receive that complete trust.
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I felt like I made you a feast of my soul on a silver platter, and you smashed the platter to the floor. I was heartbroken. I was grieving.
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And I received no apology. I was too hurt to even ask for one. There is no asking for an apology when your soul has been spread on the floor like offensive trash. I was in a state of complete horror emotionally, and so only my ego could keep my body running. For once, I felt like my incredible capacity to suppress emotion was serving me, or at least, my ego thought so.
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The whole workshop pilot test went forward with me in this state of complete turmoil, hiding it from you, from my family, from my friends. I felt so alone, because I couldn't let a single crack show. If I showed anyone, it would get back to you. I couldn't allow that. I needed time to heal, and I didn't have time or space to heal. I didn't know what to do but hide.
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I was going to send a video, but my webcam is not working. And I'm honestly not brave enough to say these things to you live. I lose my authenticity and go back to being what feels "safe" when present with other humans who I feel I can not completely, 100% trust.
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I wanted to tell you these things with my own voice so that you hear my emotion. I'm shaking as I type these words. I've already written about this dozens of times, and I still shake with emotion. I've already talked to Paladin about this dozens of times, and still it burns in my heart like fire. It simultaneously feels icy. It's like an icy-hot rub has been rubbed on the contours of my chest, heart and rib-cage. This sense of betrayal is a rift between you and I. And that rift keeps me from feeling trust. It feels like, "If I can't trust Oryx, I can't trust the universe."
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To compound this, a day or two later, you and Hare came up into my room. I was working. It takes me extra "shutting down" to work. If I thought doing the workshop through my pain was hard, that was nothing in comparison to working through it. I was throwing every scrap of will power and energy into it. I was drained, empty, angry, defeated, helpless and in a utter place of despair, and now my so-called friends are invading my space and won't leave when I ask them to leave repeatedly.
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I called on Paladin to champion for me. "Certainly there must be someone I could trust!" I thought. I was so panicked. If he hadn't had stood up for me, I would have not been far from the vibration of suicide.
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I felt so defeated and hurt. I wanted repair in our relationship. I wanted it desperately. I wanted apology. I wanted understanding. I wanted empathy. I wanted compassion. I wanted some sort of human care! I felt like an abandoned baby in a desert. I was also terrified. When I started to try to tell you how I felt, I only opened the door to my feelings a tiny, tiny crack. I was still in hiding, and you didn't see how hurt I was.
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You were dismissive; or at least, I felt dismissed. When I said, "I thought I had killed you!" you replied, "What if the universe killed Oryx?"
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I felt myself shutting down and closing back up. There would be no repair. There would be no apology. There would be no compassion. And most importantly, I felt, "anger is not safe, not safe, not safe."
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And no wonder I experienced jealousy as I never had before. Then you and Paladin shared a kiss. For Christ's fucking sake, of course I was bleeding upset! But I was so out of touch that I called it "jealousy." I didn't even know what was going on with myself anymore. I had segmented, and segmented, and segmented myself. I had segmented the segments to handle the situation. I was in so much grief that it's taken me the better part of a year to reintegrate the segments enough to see what happened, to hear the full story from my full self!
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It was only a couple weeks ago that I finally forgave you. I tried to write to you about that, but I don't know if you ever got the message. I sent it from Paladin's tablet in the middle of the night.
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And it's not a full forgiveness. I can't help that. I'm bad at forgiveness because I am so convinced I will always be betrayed again and again. That's my authentic truth at this time, and denying it only makes it worse. There is no faking it until I make it. That was a lie I was telling myself.
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"Ultimate student. Ultimate teacher," you once said.
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Certain things you've said to me stick with me all the time. They've become part of me, like mantras from my childhood. This entire experience is part of being an ultimate student of life. The way this all has lined up has allowed me to see what was happening on many, many levels. I've been able to pick apart so many strings of consciousness in this past year. You've been a big part of that.
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I want you back in my life. Not just present in my life physically, but back in my heart. I want to feel like my love for you is safe. I want to feel like I can trust you. I want that desperately. I want it so badly that I cry about it. And yet I feel so completely unsafe I can't even tell you the truth to your face. I wish I was sending this as a video, because face-to-face interaction is so important to you. It's because of you I became so determined to work on my phone issue, only to realize I was only so driven away from phones because of you. Because of the way I feel misunderstood by you, and by the small heartbreaks that causes me.
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My emotional guidance system is my personal truth. When something doesn't feel right to me, it is my sacred duty to accept that it doesn't feel right. When you tell me that your guidance is causing you to do something which doesn't feel good to me, and I communicate to you that it doesn't feel good to me, and then you use "guidance" as your reason for doing it and continuing to do it, that creates deep discord in me. It means I can not trust the universe, or my friend is a liar. Just writing that sentence made my stomach hurt, my temples hurt, my feet hurt, my eyes moisten, my eye-brows draw together... It makes me sick, literally.
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What you feel is right, you must listen to. I get that. But when I tell you I'm doing what feels right to me, and you combat that with, "Well, I'm doing the opposite, even though it hurts you, because guidance tells me to," I can't trust you. It makes me feel like you're saying, "My guidance is superior to you. My guidance knows what is best. You're just a peon. Do what I tell you. Even if it hurts. This pain is your awakening, so suck it up."
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Can you see why I had to pull away? You say you want all of the data. But it doesn't feel safe to give you "all of the data" relevant to you. It feels scary. I still feel the need to justify myself to you. I feel like I have to be logical, "awakened" and enlightened for you to accept me. That causes me to think I have to be a really good faker. But I can't actually become enlightened while I'm faking and denying my own emotions. I can't deny my emotional guidance system, my wants, and my needs in favor of yours and still be loving to myself. It's not possible for me. Maybe you never meant to ask that of me, ever. Yet, I felt like that was being asked of me repeatedly.
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I hope we can talk about this. I hope there can be safety in the conversation. I want to stop hiding from you. This is a peek at my soul. This is a peek at my experience. It is a limited peek - limited to text - limited by my own understanding at this snapshot moment. But this peek feels, once again, like I am out-stretching to you a silver platter with my heart on it. Please don't cast me to the dust. I'm literally begging you. Shamelessly. Because it's my truth. And my truth is all I have.
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~ Nuria
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PS: I am right now coming out of three days of high-fever and almost leaving my husband and then realizing I'm crazy for considering turning against myself in that way... And having my first experience with simultaneous existence in several dimensions at once. So please forgive me if I come off as hysterical, crazy, over-the-top, confused, or long-winded.
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...
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And yet, I couldn't send it. What if she skimmed it? What if she rejected me, despite my earnest sincerity? And so my heart ached and ached, and still, I said nothing to Oryx. Just like the letter I wrote in February that I couldn't send to her, six months previously. And again I wrote responses to her in March, but didn't even consider sending them that time.
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A couple days later I had an opportunity to see her, and instead I let it pass me by. After the second emotional processing class at the Eco Village, I just left with Paladin.
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"It's okay if you don't want to visit Oryx," he said.
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I felt doubt, but I wasn't about to visit her when my emotions were so confused and the greater aspect of myself said, "hurry away."
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Maybe it's just not time yet, I thought. Maybe it will never be time, I thought. My heart ached.