DANCEY MEAD

I’ve been thinking recently that I have maybe never known what trust feels like. I often get told by people that I can’t trust them, mostly men I am in romantic relationships with. I have little general trust for most people.

Last night,  I had an amazing conversation with a friend of mine. They are having a really hard time with an ongoing love drama. It looks excruciatingly painful and dangerous from the outside. I am being told a lot by my partner that he’s tired of not being trusted, the implication being that it’s my fault there isn’t trust between us. This happened in my previous relationship as well. I experience panic and anxiety about not trusting him daily, and near-constantly wish that I trusted him more.

In this conversation with my friend, we talked about how we loved each other, and how we trusted each other. It just seemed so normal. They had posted a blog the other night about their now-deceased father’s love – although it was flawed in many ways – being the most beautiful, consistent, matter-of-fact love they’d known. I can’t relate to this with my own family, but I could understand through my love for my friend.

Saying it to each other didn’t feel like some big, grandiose declaration; it felt – well – it felt like nothing.

And that has been my revelation. It wasn’t a feeling, it was a fact. And I do have that fact. I know what is to trust at least one person. We talked about this, and they shared with me the key points in our relationship that had strengthened their trust in me. They were all times when I had shown complete, utterly honest vulnerability. I have seen their vulnerability too – total and open. When neither of us, in turn, have any pretense left. They also said that at these times, they had a strong sense of knowing that they could hold anything I threw out there. I feel the same about them. I can connect and empathise with their pain, and with the way they love the world, because they show it to me. They write about it, they create art that shows it, they express themselves to me.

When I think about the trust between me and my boyfriend, I remember times when I have been similarly open. I have been completely vulnerable, I have poured my heart out. I have been more connected to my feelings, and more able to demonstrate them. I can imagine that my boyfriend feels like he understands me, has ‘seen’ me, and essentially trusts me.

My boyfriend struggles to articulate his feelings. He struggles to even know what they are. He regularly gets confused by his emotions. He gets angry fairly regularly too, unable to touch the vulnerability and hurt that lies underneath. He seems stuck. Often when I try and connect to him and share my painful emotions, he says that he feels tired and drained, that this is really hard. I imagine he has the same resistance internally when he comes face-to-face with his own emotional pain, and hides from it. He has said this is something that happens for him. He hasn’t released, he hasn’t processed.

Last night it dawned on me that perhaps the lack of matter-of-fact, rock steady trust between us, isn’t just because I fundamentally don’t know how to trust people. It might not be all my fault. I know how to trust someone who shows themselves to me. Who knows themselves. I am not intending to off-load some idea of ‘blame’ – I don’t think there should be blame around the struggle to establish trust. But it is helpful for me to have seen, clearly, that I can and do trust people. I know what that is like. Last night I was centered in my own power, clearly seeing that I had trust inside of me, and could give it to people if my criteria were met. I am not sure if my boyfriend has met my criteria. Yet.

There is a big whale underwater here, which is that of course, sexual relationships are very different. Along with that, sexual trust is where most of my difficulties lie. But is has been useful for me to see that I can trust in any way at all, and it leads me to observe my sexual, romantic relationship, and ask myself what trust I have there, what trust he has for me, and how we can go about exploring each other and building trust between us. It has given me hope, a leg-up to the first branch.

this is all i need

a dog at my feet and dharma dreams

big boots to trudge in

and a big coat

what i need is fairly simple.

what i need

is not to worry about anything else

because they won’t make me happier

than catching a chicken

or walking on a boggy frozen field

looking at dartmoor

covered in snow and sunshine.

i’d love a van

to be sat in now

preparing my kindling

and listening to music.

It’s not about courage or lack of it. It’s about not putting that shit onto someone else. I have had the courage to give many times, poeple  repeatedly do not know what to do with it once they’ve asked you to open up. What they imagined you needing to share becomes ten fold, and they cannot deal with it.

People have offered to take it, and I have tried to give it, but ultimately people end up finding me needy, draining, and too much.

I find it too much. No one can know another’s pain, only their own. My pain is too much for me to bear, and no-one around me is able or willing to be what I need. And they shouldn’t have to be. They may be sad when I have gone, but they were under more strain than they could bear when I was there.

I have searched for Gurus, for God, but ultimately a combination of me being too stuck and my choice of teachers being too poor has led to repeated failure. I do not feel like I can give it all again.

Yet I cannot deal with my pain. And I cannot give it to anyone else. It is painful when someone ‘sees’ me, a little, because although it opens a gateway, a channel, I cannot give what I feel to them, I cannot lean on them, because I can still see that however much they want to help, they can only see it, they can’t take it. Half smiles of awkward compassion do not a healing companion make.

I do not expect help. From individuals or from the universe. That is why I would like to give myself back to the universe – to disolve. I would like to disapate this knotted energy inside me, and I cannot do it while I am still clutching on to a day to day existence. I cannot let go while I am alive. If I do, I will go crazy and/or be sectioned, people will not want to or will not be able to be near me. I will lose my mind letting go in life or through death, either way.

I choose the way that quietly takes my energy away – let me slowly bleed into the river waters, and let the skin on my face make love with it’s muddy bed. I do not want to choose another way if that means that my energy interacts with others’ in a way that is draining, taking, reacting, backfiring. They do not get it and there’s no need for them to. There’s nothing to understand.

You can wax lyrical to me about all the joy there is in the world, and I can wax lyrical to you about how I do not find any of it. You can keep telling me that one day I will find it, but I prefer to stop chasing a postive experience. I just choose to end. Any experience is temporary. I prefer no experience.

I am not strong enough to become the watcher, the non-experiencer, while I am still trying to move about the world, while my heart and lungs pump breath and blood about me. I have tried. I am not strong enough to keep trying. I wish to become the non-experiencer through transferring this small expression of life into the water and the roots of trees. They will take better care of it than I can.

I cannot commune with things that are living while I am in this concrete city. The concrete creeps up and the human population grows, and my heart groans from the weight of it all. I cannot escape to ‘nature’. There is nowhere to escape to. If I went and lived as a recluse in a distant forest, would you feel any less sense of loss? If I died falling from a cliff while walking a beautiful mountain path, would it seem better that I ‘died doing what I loved’?

Humans are too messed up for me to be around. I am too messed up to be around humans. ‘Civilised’ humans. I am not healthy here. Something is not met in me. I cannot do it. I have to run away. There are no humans ’round here strong enough to take me. To break me open and rearrange the ingredients. And why should they? It is easier to remove myself, rather than take the wings away from others one by one and anchor them to my own negativity. They cannot take their own negativity – how should they take mine? What can they give to me? What can I take from them? Let all this cease.

The Guru is perhaps an imaginary psychological idea. A projection. All is well and good until the surface you are projecting onto becomes too rocky to see your own vision any longer. And you have to see that everything was in your imagination. A good trick if it carried on working until healing was complete. But it never has for me. It has always broken too early, before I am ready to hold myself in this vessel.

I am not sure how to live. I am not sure how to die, but it feels like death is the last option I haven’t tried.

is it wrong that i am feeling a sense of connectedness through ‘social networking’?

maybe not.

i feel like i am developing a feeling,
(a realisation ((i love realisations)) )
that i am d.i.y, and
there’s nothing like friends
and community
not even a relationship
that was Great,
it had greatness within it,
and truth,
but sadly
neither did you nor i
when put together
over time
?????

I’M GONNA BE BRAVE
LOVE THE FRIENDS IN MY LOVE
IN LIFE
EXPRESS AND CONNECT
EXPRESS AND CONNECT
PERHAPS IF I ONLY SHARE MY MEANING
THEN OTHERS WILL FIND ME

last night i clung to you
and realised that in that moment i felt most connected to LIFE alone.

that hurt, that stung, too much to bear.

i cried for you,the you i find that greets me by mind is not the same;
i greeted you through the body of yours,
the only constant
between me and you

“clinging to me
like a last breath you would breathe
you were like home to me
i don’t recognise this street”

i feel and fear this is the end for us. that we are nearing the end.
you say that i am none of these nice things to you but you just love me
i don’t want you to ‘do’ me, no
but i don’t think that we are what we are looking for
i don’t believe, can’t believe, that this really could be it from the universe
our souls have so much more to share, and bond, make love through these ‘things’ –
communion, we don’t have it

i don’t understand if this is just my confusion,
my ignorance
of understanding what love is
but i have not been proved wrong yet
this is not right
yet

wait
wait
wait

i just had the most amazing night singing with someone,
i really let my heart open it seems
and i fell in love with myself,
and then i went to my room and my boyfriend was busy,
and so i did some yoga stretches
which turned into me just hugging myself,
it was amazing and i had an ephiphany.
i called myself ‘baby’, a word my partner and i never use for each other,
and i told myself it’s all ok,
and i was so truly comforted by it, as a baby, and then also really saw myself as a baby who has grown into this body, so awkwardly, so scaredly and resistantly, with such sharp, painful fear of confusion, into this body,
and i just held myself, i held myself,
i could see how i could feel so safe in my own arms,
and love myself, and comfort myself
and yet i could also see how much i couldn’t let go,
what i didn’t trust to give to anyone anymore,
not even to myself,
and that was so interesting to me,
because for how then can i expect or desire to let go into someone else first?
wow, WOW, it has to be me, to feel the love, to feel loved
i just hugged myself and had a true ‘ness’ of loving myself, it felt so very new and fresh

i have just started seeing a hypnotherapist, i had my initial consultation,
and he asked me how i felt as a child, praises and repremands,
and what i would have changed,
what i would do now if i could,
and what i wanted from hypnotherapy.
i didn’t know how to answer all his questions,
i found them very difficult,
and gave him many wordy answers.

then, earlier today, i realised what it was
that i needed to say,
and that was that,
what i wanted from the hynotherapy was,
that i wanted to feel loved,
and more specifically,
that i wanted to trust that my partner loved me.
But really, it is really, really that,
i want to feel loved.
let me feel that feeling.
i can’t believe i got it from myself,
from connected with myself,
through opening up,
through singing,
just a magical connection that happened spontaneously,
after all the worry, the worrying,
the forced attempts at beauty,
and then,
chloe,
it happens.

a drum&bass version ‘my girl’ is playing in the background from a summer party down the road, and it sounds as though everyone there is singing along.

Thank you for opening me up to myself.

Yesterday, i slapped myself in the face, and punched myself on the head and face, i beat and flogged myself with fists and a bunch of keys, i scratched myself and wept and wept, for not being able to love myself.

Today I have sung into myself and met a person who i am scared of, scared for, and who i want to love, and who i feel i can offer ultimate and infinite comfort toward.
it is me, who is the great teacher, the great protector.

And this,
is Progress.

six months ago tonight i played to you and you played to me

i could barely look into your eyes as you sang of falling in love.
six months ago we did that.

we have broken up one, two, three, four, five times at least since then. o love have mercy on us! eternally deciding. right now you are playing an computer game you used to love that you found in a charity shop today.
i am discovering beautiful new music and being inspired by the internet world – a rare thing. you say hey sweet to me and press your hands to your heart, and invite me to play with you.
i totally love you so much. i am very happy to be with you.
happy mensiversary xxx

i want you to look at me in that way
i want to be young lovers again
how much happens when you’re open
so much happens when you’re open

i watch them and pretend that they’re in love,
i watch them and pretend that they’re in love,
i watch them and watch them and watch them
and pretend that they’re in love
watching them gives me the amputated wings of a dove

you used to get behind my bitter shell
i used to open up for you, you used to be ready
i close my eyes and dream of you, even when you’re there
there there, even when you’re here
the comfort’s gone, the honesty is falling away
oh bitter saline crust, over every trusting part that had it’s place in me

you are warm and i am cold
when you reach for me it only burns
follow the heart, and it could just lead you somewhere you are numb
speak your heart, and it could just lead you somewhere you are dumb

I have been another year older for nineteen minutes, without realising. This makes me sad, I feel like my dad, the weight of his pain sinks into my face, my expression, the corners of my mouth. When did it get like this? I have become so broken. Perhaps I never wasn’t broken. I tried to hold each new thing, make a fresh new vase out of good clay, good intentions – but perhaps the mold I’m working with is faulty. Is broken. Perhaps all this time it hasn’t been good. I guess ending up in a cult at sixteen and arguably before that at fourteen if you count radical swappie political recruiting as cultish, isn’t such a good sign. I can’t believe that, that this has been my life, I was such a dreamer – maybe I still am. Maybe that’s why I can’t be here, like really be here. I’ve been staying up watching 10 Things I Hate About You and all I could think of was writing a song which sang about how I wanted to slip away into a different world, where the paintball scene goes on for ever and Heath Ledger didn’t die til he was old and he was happy. I also thought that films are a very safe way for us to experience and let out our emotions, I found a wicked article one time by a film maker that talked about how he found it a good medium to work with because the audience are there in the theatre, really wanting a cinematic experience, to be whisked away, to see a spectacle. I also found myself wishing that I had grown up in 90s American college, and learnt archery and all sorts of mad skills. I think maybe I should go to America, and write songs about it. Hello, hello, it’s me, it’s me, I’m broken, broken, beyond relief, beyond anything you could, believe. I’ve travelled, travelled, so, so far, to be here, here, where you all are, and so, so, round I’ll go, following dreams that go nowhere. Except the same, place, always, a feint dark, disgrace, taints me all my days, days, and all that the ways of life, have taught me is live, live, shortly and slowly, it might help to stem the pain, pain. Slow, slow, mind how go down that rabbit hole, mind how you go down that rabbit, hole. Toiled and broken, plundered and turned in, over and in, round it begins, around the world for to sing, sing, of all the ways of my sins, sins. Wow well that’s good, twenty-five for thirty-three minutes and you’ve already written a song. Perhaps this is your calling. Perhaps you should follow your heart, my dear, my beautiful dear, perhaps you should follow your heart, heart. I love you. I love you, not some stupid boy who doesn’t know he has a rod up his ass. Me. This beautiful being that you inhabit and don’t care for. These hands, these fingers, must care for you right now, somehow. They really do. Follow your heart, child. Follow your heart. It’s broken and so it’s pulling in all the different directions there are to go, but somehow still it knows, it knows, somehow still it knows.

I have decided to come of age. I have decided to do this. Perhaps it was better that this was always a secret, because then I can just truly do the things I want to do, and do the things I truly want to do. It means I can shed my strings, silently, and quietly, and just start doing. It’s my life, I am twenty-five years old. I am. Me. Don’t let the fear sink in. Don’t let the doubt come in. You have to stop, to change this now. Keep flowing, sister. You gotta keep playing, girl, you gotta keep moving, with the waves, inside, against the waves, you’ll make a stormy, tide.
I am now twenty five years old. I am not going to eat crap anymore. I can NOT eat crap. I am going to not eat sugar, anymore. Fruit, fine. Honey, fine. Whatever, but for now, fruit and honey. No sugar. This is not extreme. This is born out of love, for joy. I CAN do that. I am also not going to compulsively stare into mirrors whenever I spy one in a room I am in, as soon as I am alone. It has become a habit, whatever, look in the mirror, but never to judge, you are not the Judge. You are the Lover, remember?

I’ve decided, now I’ve had time to think about, not to read your letter. Fuck you for hijacking me at work when I told you I didn’t want to see you, and fuck your selfish desire for closure over my very simple request. And while I’m at it, fuck you for abandoning me and then taking the piss last night, while I was at my most sexually and emotionally vulnerable. Though perhaps you’ll understand why I’ll never trust you enough to actually fuck you. I see now that I love you more than you can know, but I’ve lost all faith in the probability that I will ever see you step beyond your self-made middle class tragedy. It hurts me to finally recognise that I am useless to you, ***: someone who has such obvious beauty in their heart. Good luck.

You are so great! I love you. On the hunt for ***, will come over when I’ve found some x

Oh, darling, I missed you today. So much. But it was good to sort things out: I did lots of work on those websites, emailed *** festival organisers, reorganised the van, told *** how things are, and now I’m dealing with imminent snowfall by putting off sleeping! Hope you stay warm tonight. I love you x

Dearest ***,

I'm on my way back through ***, having left *** yesterday... my love, I have
had just the greatest time! I got to see all my favourite people from last year, and
met so many more; likewise with the tunes we played together! And it's been so great
to watch *** discover the source of the music we play together first-hand: she's
really made the repertoire her own, and loves it in a way that's now all her own
too. I feel full to the brim with joy, and now that I'm on my way back, all my
thoughts are of sharing my happy and recharged self with you.

Because I feel so full, as if about to burst, it's really hard for me to know that
I'll be just hanging around in *** for nearly a week before I see you next - I'm
hoping I don't implode in the meantime!! Maybe it's selfish to say that to you; but
I'm listening very closely to my self, and it's true to say that it's urgently
longing for you. But when I think of how much I needed this trip - even though I had
to leave you to do it, which was so difficult - it makes me very happy to think of
you in ***, filling yourself with that same joy. More than ever, I understand
that we both need that, and I'm glad to recognise it.

Thank you so much for sending me not just your last email, but the one you thought
you'd lost as well. When I read them, I imagine holding you in bed
at the end of a busy day while you talk to me in that way that I know is you at your
most basic and honest... that's how it sounds to me, as if you were in that place
while you were writing. And I find that, and I find you, so beautiful. I found
myself reading your blog a couple of times on this trip also, because that's
beautiful too. It feels like I've already had such a perfect love letter from you.

I miss you, darling, and I send your beautiful soul all the love that's mine to give.

x x x

***

My darling ***,

I miss you so, so much. I'm having such a great time in *** with ***, and her
friends *** and ***; and I'm really looking forward to seeing *** and all
my friends again; but what I wish for most right now is if you'd suddenly walk
through ***'s front door whilst we're listening to some great *** music and
sit with me on her sofa, my hands and arms around your sides and my head and lips
against your shoulder. I miss hearing your voice and I miss listening to you telling
me about the things that are important to you, even though sometimes those things
are difficult to hear. I miss the way you look at me and I miss watching you as you
move around the room or dance up the street, even though you dance further and
further away from me. I miss the way you share yourself with me, and I miss sharing
myself with you - even when it feels so difficult to be totally vulnerable and
trusting. And most of all, I miss seeing you and feeling you next to me when I wake
up in the morning, and just feeling so happy to lean over and kiss you good morning,
even though you're probably still asleep - or a bit grumpy if not!

I love you; I love you; and I love you.

*** x

Hi ***! Just leaving *** on the ***.  I missed you last night, and I really miss you right now. I’m so happy to think about the moment I’ll see you again! I love you xx

Thanks, my wonderful love! xx

Hello! Just got out of work, and I need to go straight to *** in *** to sort our *** out. Will let you know when I’m done! Can’t wait to see you xx

Hello! Sorry I missed your call, I was in the shower. Thanks for telling me that. I guess they’ve not exactly seen much of you recently, or you them. And I’ll still be all yours when you get back!! I love you. x

I’m free! And if you’re free too,  really want to see you… x

we have become so intense with each other, we have shared so much intensity, that sex can be relaxed. we have not had sex yet, we have made love countless moments, we have opened and cried and ruthlessly accepted no less from each other, and NOW our sex can be relaxed, it can be playful, it can be joyous, it can be so light hearted, and I have never felt this way before.

I have never been this way before, so keen to freely share and give my body to its’ purposes, to yours, to your purposes, to give and share and freely see what they shall choose to bring to each other. Because I trust you. I have shared that with you now, and I will continue to do so, but this feels like it can be a way that we can really relax around, all around each other.

When you left out of the caravan, I stayed in the exact same moment, the exact same spot, and felt my heart pulse warm electricity around and around itself, circulating, to its own magnetic sensation. I have not felt that sensation, ever or at all. This is all feeling so new to me. I watched the light waltz in and out of the fans reflective surface, and I thought that this must be the ebbing glow and flow from my heart as the outside world surely could not be moving that close in time with me. Maybe I have just started moving with it.

I did not have my glasses on and I felt like I could really see every molecule of light oozing through the space in front of me, as though I was watching an oil painting take form. I cried so slightly, as though the swell was just ever so slightly pouring out from my soul; but I could contain this, I could hold it, I can be with it and singly appreciate such subtly present moments of beauty.

We have been looking for a way to relax with each other, to save our talking, to relax, but we have not been able to do it because we have still be so searching, searching within each other for yet another corner to pour ourselves into, to shed light into every part and piece of us. I could not believe that we had possibly found something so beautiful, that enables us to relax from these moments of intensity and yet so utterly share each other still.

I feel like a child, who knows more about the soul and sharing than I ever did as this adult version of myself. This growing and acclimatising to the world has only grown me further away from the honesty of myself. You help bring me back to this place and to share it with you. We are so amazing. We have talked about everything and I want to talk about so much more with you. We forget to drink water, we can’t even bear to think of it. Because it would take us away from this intense joy we bring about in each other.

The funny thing is, there’s so much of me that still does not want this. And while turning my attention and deep listening to it, it makes me laugh gently as I see it, while I know that at the same time I am still going to let you reach that deep part of myself, so that I can carry me away on this awesome journey, with you.