Wednesday 3 liner

Jess was sick today and spent the day with me. I hope she is well for our trip this weekend.

Worked like crazy on Howies photo’s today. He can’t make it tonight thank goodness, so it gives me tomorrow to finish off. I hate to rush.

Inspriration for the day:

Until the really “great” stuff comes along, do the not-so-great stuff.

The not-so-great stuff always leads to the great stuff. Whereas doing nothing pretty much leads to nowhere.

To Valentine or not?

A few weeks ago, My oldest daughter (9th grader) asked me to help her with a speech. The topic was ‘Celebrations’.

One of the topics that came up after a little brainstorming was that of what I call “commercial celebrations”. Valentine’s Day falls into that category for me. Quite honestly, in the grander scheme of things, commercioal celebrations of this sort just add to the clutter we create in our lives and communities. How much wasted paper is created out of card production alone I wonder.

I will state now – and will mention this in future posts – that I have had a strong feeling about 2012 and it’s significance to the human race since I was a teenager. As it approaches, despite thinking for years that it may be a Donnie Darko type end of the world scenario, I have a strong feeling that it is in actual fact going to be a turning point in our collective thinking – a point of critical mass if you like. Perhaps the real dawning of the Age of Aquarius. In this coming age, I see that as a matter of necessity, humankind will become absolutely consciously aware of our wastefulness.

It will be an age where material things become less important. My optimism extends to an extended period of peace previously never experienced throughout recorded history. A wave of global community perhaps created through an environmental disaster, or the threat thereof.

So I return to Valentines Day.

It is one of those unnecessary commercial days on our calendar which I foresee to be a little more muted this year due to the realization that collectively we can no longer pretend to afford such trivialities. Global recession is a warning sign.

Watch this space.

End of an era

Therapy has come to an end for now, mainly for financial reasons, though I will be going back in about a month for a one hour follow up.

A lot has happened between my last session and this post.  A lot of positive things though.  But I will continue only to post in my private journal until I return to therapy.

However……

I am writing again, and plan to have a part submission with a synopsis ready by the end of September and a search for a literary agent or publisher will begin.

I will record my writing progress here fort now

The Tangled Web Saga Cont’d

Wes had coffee with SD on Monday afternoon.  Afterwards, Wes and I had drinks to discuss.  The problem of course, is that SD is really a very nice guy.  Wes tried the rude approach to try put him off, but I am afraid SD is smitten with Wes. Its quite amusing really.

So we made a decision that we would cope with SD’s infatuation with Wes for another week, when SD leaves for Dubai.  The problem should then be over.  I really hate it when something like this threatens whant Wes and I have.  He is uncomfortable, yet under different circumstances, he may even have enjoyed the attention.

So yesterday, SD comes online and spent a lot of time apologising for what he has done.  I thought it was pretty grown up for him to do so.

I am going to miss him when he is gone.

But not the soap opera.

Oh what a tangled web we weave….

So I revived my profile on a local dating site about two weeks ago.

At some point, I get a mail from a really good looking 22yo, lets call him SD.  His profile is intelligently put together, and his mail carried the comment: If you are not afraid of our age gap, drop me a line.  Or something along those lines.  And of course I am not, and I did.

We met for drinks – I had backup arrive in the form of my straight friend Ian about two hours into the date, and we all got on famously.  We kissed when we left, and I invited him to dinner at my place later in the week.  He called me several times, sent me cute sms’s and e-mails.

Dinner went well, and we ended up on the couch, kissing and going through some simulated sex.  All in all, a really good evening.  The next day, he went in to have his wisdoms removed, and decided to surprise him by being there when he wakes up.

He loved that fact I was there, held my hand, cried a bit saying he never expected me there.  I gave him a lift home and met his father.  he sms’d me later saying his father thinks I am a great guy.

The downside of all of this, is the fact that he has just signed a three year contract to work in Dubai, and he leaves in a month.  I know this, and accept this.  This is the reason we discussed not going all the way, and just enjoy each other’s company while it lasts, and who knows? Perhaps things don’t work out for him overseas, and he will be back, and we can look at how things progress from there.

Last Friday, Wesley and I head off to Newscafe, something we had planned, and something SD is well aware of.  He knows of Wesley, and my very close relationship with him, and is perfectly ok with that.  Late in the evening, he calls me to say he is on his way home from his firned’s place, would he mind if he had a drink with us at Newscafe.  That was cool, and he did.  Him and Wes got on fine, and Wes offered to help him out with his laptop the following day.

Wes and I had breakfast the folwwoing morning, and he said to me that for the first time, he really approves of someone I am seeing.  He leaves to help Stroud, I leave to collect the girls to take them to Tap lessons.

Later, Wes sms’s me to say that SD is hitting on him, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.  SD and I had made proivisional plans for the evening, so I wait for him to confirm, which he doesn’t.

Wes and I have coffee on Sunday.  He is annoyed, and says to me that he sms’d SD to tell him it wasn’t appropriate, as I am his best friend and he does’nt want me hurt.

Last night, SD is on MSN.  He asks me whats wrong, I say nothing.  He says he has to tell me something that may hurt me.  At the same time, I have Wes online too, and was conveying what is being said.  SO SD tells me he has feelings for Wesley, and didn’t mean it to happen this way.  So I tell him that I suspected from Wesleys language, and I am ok with it.  I can’t make him attracted to me.  This is an agreed response in quick consultation with Wes, as he is trying to figure a way to blow the guy off anyway, as he really doesn’t fall into his taste in age anyway.

So I say to SD that whatever he does, he mustn’t hurt Wesley.  So he asks how can he hurt him? So I say: You leaving in a month right?  He says goodbye, and goes offline.

He called Wesley four times afterwards last night.  Wesley is annoyed.  The plan is that they are having coffee later today, and Wesley is going to gently tell him to fuck off.

My irritation is not what happened, it’s the lies he expected me to believe.

OMG I am so irritated now……

I sometimes wonder where all of this is leading..

Depression and Session 7

One of the main reasons I initially went onto anti-depreesants seven years ago, was to quell the thoughts of suicide.  I found myself planning down to the finest detail how I would do it, where, what time of day, even to the point of doing it in such a way that it would look accidental so that all life insurances would pay out and my wife at the time, and my children would be well looked after financially.  I wrote suicide notes, and even bought things that I thought I would need to complete ‘the job’.

The medication worked, but the side effects were not what I wanted.  I felt I was not being the person I was born to be.  Last year, I came out of a two year regime on cipralex – a medication I do reccomend if you are into that kind of thing.  Physical side effects were minimal, my sex drive was good, and so was performance.  But apparently this is not the same for everyone, especially for women for whom the sexual side effects can be debilitating.  Loss of orgasm is cited as one of the major drawbacks.  For me, orgasm was more difficult to attain, but they were explosive and intense.  And gay sex with the right partner and technique does not always require orgasm for both partners – but lets not go there now.

So I made this conscious decision to come off the medication, and chose to investigate other possibilities.  I wanted to treat the cause, and not the symptoms.  This is the reason I am doing this now with Susan, my darling therapist.

Having said this, the week before my latest session saw me sinking right back into suicidal mode.  Not that I intend killing myself, it’s just the mode that is intensely irritating.  It’s obsessive and annoying.  I dream about dying, i even fantasise about it.  But it subsided, and by the time session 7 arrived, I was feeling good again.

It was a late session this time, 5pm to 7pm in the evening.  Elizabeth, the receptionist, left during the session, and the whole experience of being there completely alone with Susan was very different.

We started with a discussion of the depression stage, and she asked me to call her office if that happened again to see if I could be scheduled in.  It is this type of state that our work would be better handled – her technique uses emotional pain for transformation.  As we moved onto the dream discussion, I suddenly felt a wave of the same depression returning, and found myself fighting back tears.  She immediately asked me to remove my glasses, remain where i was, and close my eyes.

Apparently it was the perfect timing to regress, and without the need for ‘the chair’ and its paraphernalia, I went from tears, to a state of desperately wanting to die.  Without much effort on her part, I found myself fighting for my life in what I can only assume was the womb.  I was surrounded by a grey flexible bubble, and suspended without gravity.  I was kicking and trying to scream to get out, but my strength was failing, and eventually, I was only staring out to some void, praying for death. “I want to die, I want to Die,” I heard myself repeating.

I physically felt my self falling, accelerating.  My eyes were closed, and I did not want to see.  There was a deafening silence and I opened my eyes to find myself suspended in space.  Everything was so incredibly crystal clear, and perfectly in focus.  I was in utter awe, and felt I understood the magniutde of the universe. Understood the influence and interaction of every single atom, cell and molecule.

I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on my legs, and when I opened them again, I was lying in a field, another person.  It was a very, very real experience, not one I want to downplay at all, despite the damned voice in my head telling me it is impossible.

At this point, Susan was prompting me to look down at my feet, to see the clothes I was wearing, well aware that I had regressed beyond the womb.  All i could tell her was that my feet were dirty, but I was distracted by the intense feeling of love and the warmth of the sun.

I became aware of the love for a girl.  An impossible love as I couldn’t have her.  But I was lying in the filed, imagining being with her, experiencing the kind of love we experience when we are teenagers.  I saw her face, but I can’t really recall it now.  I was aware of a reddish barn off to the left in the distance, lit up by the  late afternoon sun. I knew my name was Simon.  Susan was prompting me to look around, but I was just annoyed because I was dreaming of the girl.

At some point, I became afraid.  And I forced myself out of the experience.  I opened my eyes and found myself back in the rooms, but yet it seemed a strange place.  I recognised everything, yet it was a strange place.  I never spoke for a long time, and everytime I closed my eyes, I was in love again.  I cried some, but they were tears of love.

Eventually, I slowly emerged back into the presence.  I laughed at the feeling I had in my chest.  It was like a blue flame, much like the northern lights, that danced around.

My right hand had been on my thigh during the process, and as I moved it, I was thrown back to remember that during the process, I felt someone touch my leg.  Susan told me that I was doing that for a long time during the last phase where I was experiencing Simon’s emotions. She asked me the year, and I simply said 1247.

It has been a few days now, and I can still recall the feeling by touching my leg.

Session 6 and subsequent dreams

I skipped out blogging session 6 for reasons I cannot really fathom, but here it is basically:

We started off discussing the dreams in my previous post. She was most excited about the dream involving my entire tooth loss. Basically it is an indication that my mind has accepted change, and change was afoot. All three dreams involved my mother, and all involved only myself and the women in my life.

One of the essentials in the blueprint process highlighted that my biological mother is and was not ideal. It is basically an indication that the mind is processing the change from considering my biological mother my major influence, and slowly switching to the divine mother Susan was really excited about this too.

In the chair this session, we focused on meditation, using Vipassanā, or introspection. The technique she uses requires that one learns how to focus on external and internal ‘objects’ such as the sound of the clock, the birds outside, the sound of ones own breathing – that kind of thing. It is a technique she uses specifically to draw attention away from the mind’s incessant voice which detracts from ones higher self. It is a technique I am focusing on, as I still see the internal voice as being one of my major obstacles to the healing process.

At one point, i was asked to visualise the emotion of fear and stress within me. It became a very clear image of an inverted triangle within my chest. It is a yellowish diseased colour, and is covered in festering sores. Gross I know – but yeah, that’s how I perceive it.

Another exercise we did was the Secret Garden, and it is something I can recommend to anyone wanting to gain something extra out of meditation.

I was prompted to imagine my secret garden – a place that is the perfect garden that I would be able to escape to to relax and meditate. Every detail was prompted – plants, temperature, weather, shade, sunlight, benches, flowers, paving etc. Once established in my mind, I was prompted to explore and find the thing that wasn’t right – something perhaps ugly and out of place. For me, it was the grass – there was no grass, it was as if there wasn’t enough watering done, and the grass had died, which was just completely out of synch with the rest of this beautiful place. Once I had found the flaw, I was prompted to summons help in whatever form, to fix the problem. Susan suggested angels, because I have a special affinity to any image that contains angels – male angels. I tried, but unexpectedly, Disney’s Peter Pan arrived. He alighted in my garden and simply assured me that he would look after the grass. Without any further ado, he produced a watering can, and began spreading fairy dust around over the sand. Lush green soft grass began to sprout, and my garden was becoming the perfect place that I imagined.

The next step, was to imagine a bubble surrounding the scene, like placing the garden and the helper into one of those little snow globe things that you get at tourist shops. Then to imagine breathing the whole scen into the body, deep into the area just above the solar plexus. Once there, the bubble is prompted to explode into millions of tiny replica’s, and spread around the rest of the body.

It was an amazing experience, and a technique I try to replicate before sleeping.

I left in a feel good mode, not sure whether I had benefited from the session. However, the days that followed saw intense feelings of well-being coming through during the oddest times of the day – on the loo, making dinner, writing e-mails.

And there were dreams again of course:

The Museum

I am attending a tour of a museum of some sort, possible as part of a school outing. The lady is going through a display of war heroes, pointing out various individuals with a long pointy stick.

The ‘individuals’ are like mounted trophies. She starts from the oldest. Each trophy seems to be the head and shoulders of the actual person, preserved by taxidermy. Some are quite gross, having being removed from the battle field, and not altogether there.

Each individual is from a different war, starting from the Great Civil War (not sure what or when that was lol). He is Lancelot Charles Henry Hope the 1^st – I realise it is my great grandfather (This is my real grandfathers name). Then there is the second and the third. (My real grandfather was a war hero of sorts, having being a decorated RAF pilot).

She moved down generations and gave some explanation about each. I wasn’t really listening, because I suddenly realized that I was also on display… and three generations after me. From this point, I was just totally distracted, and never really heard anything she was saying by the time she got to me, or my future generations

The Time Machine

I discover a way to bounce into the past, as if I am on a swing, and can swing back and forth. I think I am dreaming, because it is impossible to do that right?

Everytime I go into the past, I see my high school, but don’t recognize who these people are. Maybe not even my past, and not even sure what the time frame is that I am entering. As an experiment, I draw a picture of a face on a piece of paper, and when I bounce through, I let it float to the ground. (I am always elevated above).

Back in the present, I am at a party, lots of people I don’t know. Some guy is looking at me weirdly. I think he is trying to pick me up, so I make eye contact a few times. He is drinking on his own, and eventually gets up and walk over to me. He reaches in his pocket, and takes out the picture that I drew, it is old and faded. He shoves it in my face, and has this serious aggressive look about him. And he just says “I KNOW”.

I wake up sweating. Real horror movie stuff.

Session 5 – The Chair

I have left this post for a few days, as it has taken some time to absorb and reflect on what exactly happened.

First off, I must say that I wasn’t really prepared for the technique, and with hindsight now, with the effects and results.

I did not sleep very well the night before, out of anticipation – or nervousness – of the session. The appointment was really early, and I had to be up at 5am to get through to the rooms.  I arrived a little early, so I had time to park at the gardens of the Union Buildings for a few minutes to watch the sun rise.  The gardens are immaculate, and it was the perfect way to start the day.  The city below was progressively illuminated in that unique way only crisp morning light can.

When I arrived, the cleaner was still vacuuming the reception area, so we chatted and waited till it was more peaceful before I finally got to lie back on the chair.  Susanne covered me with a blanket – it is after all, winter here and a little chilly.  It also provides a sense of security.  I was fitted with a pair of spectacles which contained a set of tiny led’s in each side.  She explained to me that during the session, various frequencies of flashes of various colours of the spectrum would be flashed at my closed eyelids to stimulate the brain through the optic nerve.  This would assist in focusing on relaxing the mind, and raising the senses.

I was expecting to go under completely, so I stressed in the beginning as she slowly coaxed me into a trance state, talking, soothing, assisting me to breathe, reminding me to breathe when I relaxed to a point where I easily forgot to re-inhale after the pause after the exhale.

I really thought I was too conscious during the whole process, the little annoying analytical voice in my head continuously telling me this is not working, and that it is a waste of time.  However, after the 50 minute session I realized it really did not seem that long at all, and the only reason I eventually asked to stop, was because of a filling bladder.

I do remember her coaxing me into raising the anger level that I began to express.  My breathing became deeper, and I remember entering a REM state on more than one occasion.  My eyes seemed to involuntarily flit back and forth as I focused on the rising pit in my solar plexus, and the ‘steel rod’ up the back of my neck which I never seemed to be able to relax.

After I came out, and removed the mask, I got up to go down the stairs to the bathroom.  Susan giggled at me and warned me to be careful down the stairs as I don’t realize how far I am still within the trance state.  I honestly felt like i levitated myself to the bathroom and back.  When I got back to the room, I sat in the regular chair, and suddenly burst into tears.  Unstoppable, unashamed.  Sudden memories of where the anger started flooded back with intense clarity.

I left, promising to log dreams and anything else that may come out of the deep.

She did warn me that the first session may not yield much, it is more like a trial run, and preparation for the mind of what will be coming during subsequent sessions.

I realize now only – four days later – that I was in a trance like thought pattern for at least two days.  Dreams were full, but not recallable on waking. I had a full weekend, starting with JL slipping and falling at his flat on Friday night and in hospital on Saturday morning with a fractured hand.  I went to collect him and spoil him a bit over the weekend.  On Sunday I had preview tickets for a new horror show – The Eye.  Scary.  I nearly broke his other hand on more than one occasion.  I took him home last night, and left wanting to jump his bones, but he was in so much pain…

Once again, I stayed up too late, watching TV, reading.  I settled into bed at 2am, and once again, I really battled to slow my mind down to sleeping pace. I had to be up early this morning to take my mom to work as her car had to be in for some repairs quite early.

I jumped awake at about 5am. I was convinced I had heard a noise downstairs, and suddenly was in a mild panic trying to remember whether I had bolted the door. I crept down the stairs with my self defense weapon of choice – a short thick length of electrical cable with a handle fashioned from electricians tape at one end. But there was nothing, and the door was bolted.

Sleep came easy after, and I awoke a few minutes before the alarm. Awoke from the most vivid dream which I have recorded for our next session below. I am not going to even attempt to speculate on where it came from, nor what it signifies. Susanne has her own take on the symbology of the dreams I have, more so now in context of the chair sessions.

Dream: Sunday/Monday 19^th May

Scene 1

Starts out as an Indiana-Jones theme. I am in the main room of the neighbours house, with a young girl child.. A voice shouts: Brace! Brace! Brace!

Suddenly I know what is coming and pick the girl up, and tell her to hold on to my back (piggy back) and hold really tight and she will be alright.

A huge ball bearing hits the garden at the side of the house like a meteor and burrows itself under the house, at which point we are flung up and out of the window into the garden next door (my garden). My car is parked in the carport there, and I know it is going to be buried in rubble. I take the girl to the side of the house in this garden where I know we are going to be safe.

Suddenly, the next door house is bombarded by similar metal balls, and it is destroyed into rubble, completely submerging the back garden, and the carport and my car. I almost think there was Indiana type movie music in the background.

Scene 2

Gail comes to fetch the girls after a weekend at this same house. I am living there with my mother, but in the process of moving out. We discuss some issues about furniture she can help me with, very amicably. We share an intimate moment where we kiss, and I imagine we are still in bed together, and we are kissing gently and knowingly. She senses this and responds too. We break the moment and the girls get into the car with her. I had put my budgie into my car earlier to move him to the new flat, and notice then that there is another big box in the car. I get in to see what it is, and it is another cage in a box with what I first think is another budgie. My mom had bought it for me, for the new place. But on closer inspection, it turns out to be a bird that looks like a seagull, but with budgie colours. I was annoyed because she had bought the wrong type of bird. Later, my older brother, Mike, tells me it is a rare ‘crab’ bird (?), but I am still annoyed about it. My mom is sulking because she realizes she bought the wrong bird, and she is smoking.

I also find the beds I was looking for (?)

Scene 3

At the side of the same house, lying on a towel, possibly reading. The maid is there, knitting or something. I feel with my tongue, that one of my molars has split, something I know is coming. One half is loose, and I wiggle it out. The root is very deep, and I have to open my mouth very wide to get it out. The other half then also feels loose, and I go through the same process. Pretty soon, one, by one, all my teeth loosen, and I have all my teeth, with some blood on the towel in front of me. There is no pain during this. My mother comes out, and I show her. She lies on the grass in front of me, and casually remarks that it looks like it is because I smoked too much, and it is better to start now with new false teeth. Her exact words I am not sure of, but she mentioned that they had a ‘waxy’ texture.

Session 4

So yesterday, I went for my 4th session with Dr Kriegler (Susanne).

I was in a foul mood when I arrived. I was annoyed with myself over Wesley, a little hungover, stressed from the traffic, and basically in a bad mood.

We spent a lot of time on relationships – past a present. I was leading up to my current attempt with JL. It really is heading for another level, and I was sitting in a state of fear that I was going to fuck it up, and end up hurting him. At this point I was even considering just ending it now, and I needed advice. We went through Gail; Nikki; Anna; Neville; Vincent….

So I am not going to end it with JL. Made the decision to let it run while I go through the therapy and see where it goes from there. The reality is, is that it is running a very relaxed course. There is no talk of rushing into to something like moving in together and that kind of thing. There is no unnecessary jealousy. There is no intense focus on sex. We don’t sms each other every ten minutes. It is not the intense stuff that gay relationships are often made of. He sms’ed me this morning telling me he can get a new place closer to his work, so he is going to look at it today. This is a good sign for me. There is ambition, independance.

Then Susanne and I completed the new Blueprint I am working towards. I aid to her, that it is just becoming a lot of ‘words’, we need to move onto the meat and potatoes stuff soon. She of course agreed, its just that we had spent so much time on other stuff, that we went to far into the second hour to have time to start the hypnosis. So we went through what I should expect during the next phase of the process.

The theory is that she will be using painful emotions during hypnosis to face the issues and ‘rewire’ the brain’s operating system. Sounds both scary and exciting. So next Wednesday, I am in the chair. Yay!

Oh and here are the blueprints:

OLD

http://salvo1279.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/blueprint_old.jpg

NEW

http://salvo1279.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/blueprint_new.jpg

Pissed off

I fail to understand – and completely understand – why W is pissed off with me.

I was the same when he sms’d me to ‘rescue’ him from a blind date.

I was SO damned jealous of his date, and more so when he sms’d me later to tell me the date swalloed.

Fuck, I love him SO much. And at the same time, I know we are not ready for each other.

And JL and I are heading for the next level. And I so want the next level to be with W.

Cries tears of misunderstanding