so i figure the only thing i have left to try is spiritual stuff. and my boss is nothing if not spiritual. i am a firm believer in energy and the universe and the law of attraction. so i was open to her. i was ready to be worked on.
she had me lay down between the two legs of the Gyrotonic machine. since we aren't at our studio anymore, the floors are carpet and not wood. wood absorbs energy, so when doing energy work, you need to have contact with wood so your negative energy has somewhere to go. i held on to each leg of the wooden machine, and closed my eyes. i gave my boss the briefest of synapses of my deal. one day in 6th grade, i was tired. i took a nap. and every day after that, i've been exhausted. i take a 3 hour nap every day.
she said "i know." she can feel my exhaustion, my despair, my hopelessness at this mystery disease that i have.
she thought for a second, and then said "that's grief."
fitting. i always though i'd handled my parents deaths so well. my sister gets hysterically upset on anniversaries, but they don't bother me. my parents have been dead for more of my life than they were alive. i don't remember much of them. i don't actually miss them. i don't have enough memories to miss them. when i do get sad, it's because i don't HAVE parents. i look at my sad excuse for a family and wish that i had a mommy to go to, or had a daddy to interrogate my boyfriends, or a cookie cutter family to have thanksgiving dinner with. but that happens maybe once a year. there are whole weeks, maybe even an entire month, where i don't think about my parents, or even the fact that i don't have any. i'm so adjusted to the way life is now. so i figured i was over it, i was over the grief. i was young, it sucked, i grew up and out of it.
but it seems that it's been manifesting itself in my body as this exhaustion. this exhaustion that only allows me to work 10 hours a week. this exhaustion that caused my GPA to hover around 3.2, when i'm fully capable of a 4.0. the exhaustion that makes me cry first thing in the morning, because the idea of getting out of bed is so daunting. i guess i'm not over the grief. maybe i never dealt with it. maybe i was just too young.
my boss started with my heart chakra. that's where grief lives. but in order to get to the heart, we need to get through my lungs. my lungs were yellow. yellow is family, sleep, sex, money. the basics. the basics. what word is coming to mind, she asked. family. that triggered the first bout of hysteria on my part. waves and waves of emotion came out from that simple word. breathe through your mouth, get that yellow out. force it out. cough. hiss. stick your toungue out. grab that yellow with your inhale and push it out with your exhale. yellow, i demand you leave now. i do not need you. i have my memories, i do not need my grief. you are making me sick, and i need you to leave. but it was stubborn. it wanted to be felt. i grabbed onto that Gyrotonic machine with all my strength and sobbed messy, snotty, loud sobs. panic attack level sobs. and then it went into my nervous system. picture your nerves, what color? yellow, family still. and then red. angry. but i don't get angry. she told me to kick and scream and pound the floor but i couldn't. i dont get angry. it doesn't want to come out. it wants to stay in my belly, making me fat. scream, she said. but i couldnt. instead, i got cold. i started shivering. my hands went numb. force it out, breath, cough. kick. out, red i demand you leave now. i will feel you and all that you have to offer, and then i demand you leave. i do not need you. out, red.
ok, we need to try a different tactic. lets open your throat chakra, we'll get to your lungs through your throat. yellow, red. get it out. hiss. cough. open your throat chakra. open, open.
ow. my throat hurts now. but it's not real. it's a manifestation, it's form the past. get rid of it, that's your grief. but it hurts.
get it out. i thought it did, but i guess not. because without 30 minutes, i had a swollen, gooey, blistery throat.
thanks for dying, mom and dad. now i have strep.
keep trying. red. why is the red so stubborn?
what word comes to mind?
greg.
what the hell? greg left me. our one year anniversary, i got a text. "i can't do this anymore." and then i heard nothing for 2 weeks. only when i went to his work did he talk to me. i never got an answer. to me, he had died. he disappeared from my life with no warning, and refused to communicate to me. that was death, and it brought to the surface the feelings of my parents dying. my body and my heart weren't ready to dig deeper to deal with the REAL feelings of death, so instead they chose to deal with the psuedo-death feelings. greg.
greg left quickly. i breathed that out in 3 or 4 breaths. i'm not attached to holding onto him anymore. it's the deeper stuff, that yellow, that i don't want to let go of. the other colors left pretty easily, but the yellow took almost 2 hours. "family, leave" she said. and my mind screamed "no, don't go!" why do i want to hold onto to grief? why am i so attached to it? i need it. it's my comfort. it's all i know. all i know is to be exhausted and sad and scared. i stopped maturing when my parents died. i was 9, and i lost my dad. i was 10, and i was an orphan. shuffled between my grandma and my mean aunts. my sister left me. no idea what to do. scared, sad, alone. i needed an escape, and my body chose sleep. and that's where i am. i am an 11 year old orphan that doesn't belong anywhere, completely alone, scrambling for any kind of relationship i can get, be it a best-friendship with an insane crackwhore who everybody hates and who drives me crazy, or a gorgeous boy who does drugs and has a girlfriend. i cling. if someone wants to be with me, i take it. i need it. i need to belong to somebody, because i don't belong to anybody. i'm 11. and my parents just died. and i sleep because it's easier than living. and in order to allow myself the pleasure of sleeping, my body is exhausted. so that i don't have to feel guilty for sleeping. so that i HAVE to sleep. i have no other choice. if i'm too tired to stay awake, i can't fight it. my whole body is conspiring against me.
the yellow. the yellow is conspiring against me.
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