Hi, guys. I'd like to apologize, mostly to myself, for my long absence here. On Halloween, 2011 I lost a dear friend who had been my main encourager to keep blogging and studying and getting myself out there. She finally succumbed to a long struggle with cancer. Her name was Jo, and I still miss her very much; but I think I'm ready to get back on here now.
Since we last spoke... Well, I've moved, but not very far; I'm still in the eastern mountains, struggling to create a life for a restless intellectual in small-town America. After two years I think I can safely say, it isn't working. So now I'm working on that.
What I've had the chance to do here, though, is a lot of healing. A year ago I started a new-fangled kind of PTSD treatment called Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). Let me see if I can come up with a metaphor that sheds any real light on what this has meant for me.
Some of you practice yoga: think of the gradual, but definite transitional moment when you began to feel in your body that flexibility, awareness, and energy flow had truly become a part of you. Some of you are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish: think of when you began to be aware that you were consciously resting, body and soul, in the arms of God. Some of you have been in love: think of when your lover's presence in your room started to feel normal. That's the best I can do. It is a physical shift in my sense of being. I am present to my own world now, in a way I can only remember being in rare moments of deep relaxation or intense exercise-- which I guess in many ways amount to the same thing.
The traumas I've been working through started when I was four years old. (I initially thought this would all go back to things that happened in my teens. I was wrong.) The most recent was this afternoon.
My wonderful housemate and her (our) dog and I were out walking in our rural neighborhood, when we paused for M to do some sniffing. I believe the last thing I said before this happened was, "Doesn't she have the cutest little nose?" Across the street, I saw a mass of black fur suddenly moving very quickly towards us. When I saw the black dog's face, I said, "Pick her up. Quick!" But before S had a chance, poor M was beset with a pair of jaws clamped around her back haunches. All I can remember wanting to do was to wrap my arms around M-- I couldn't reach her-- and punch the other dog in the face (wtf??), which seemed suicidal. At one point the big dog definitely had our little beagle's jugular between his teeth. By the time the owner had finally crossed the street and grabbed his dog, S and I were huddled together with M in both of our arms, staring at each other in terror.
Incredibly enough, M was unharmed, except for a very subdued personality this evening, and I'm sure she was having nightmares on the couch earlier, barking in her sleep. I think someone else I know could probably use some EMDR! S has an enormous bruise on her hand from what was apparently a bite. I've got nothing to show for it, except this: I think I need to figure out how I'm going to pay for seminary.
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