Fireflies in shadow caves

 A narcissistic parent (my mother) makes you feel as if everything about you is a problem and my mother made me feel just that with my physical body, and I couldn't obviously take any issues related to my emotions or feelings because she would again make me feel that they are such a problem and that she is having to do everything despite my father's demise (And recollecting in great detail about the last day of his passing plus the overwhelm and disappointment plus anger that she had nurtured for him which again seems to manifest through me and which again pulls her down).

So, the way she reacted, shamed, criticized, and made me feel guilty were all my problems which in fact was not but I got so blurred by her constant reenactment of shaming, criticizing and make me feel guilty for having problems and was termed "over sensitive" for that that I started to believe that I am in fact her problem. And despite making me feel like I am a case of charity and that she has been pretty generous in birthing me despite her trauma behind her delivery and also having to be a single parent, I felt helpless in this loop of narrative that I got entwined and fully caught up knotted in this screenplay which was not my life oriented but I felt I hardly had any say in that and completely trusted her that all the "over protection" and fussing about my body and health was in fact her love but it clearly wasn't. 

A love that's clearly made vocal and visible as a way to make her happy by being as less of a maintenance as possible for her and to keep shrinking myself in this process in respect to honoring my emotions, my hurts, my feelings in its due space which I never truly embodied as my body physically in itself felt so faulty for me that I completely dug up a grave for my emotions to keep  being buried and not come out as I could not be alive fully physically and emotionally and have a flux of energy which might come through in its own organic way had it been allowed to rather than suffocating me with her conditional way of making me feel that love from her had to be earned and each time my health for even some small issue or the other shows up for support, she would make sure that she shames me enough that going in invisibility mode as much as possible and for that shrinking my sense of self as much as possible was the only coping that I could think of in order to survive with her.

She was and will always be a toxic parent who can only think for her happiness and comfort and no matter what she says she does for me always ends up feeling like she's doing charity to me. 

To be the bigger person is not what dealing with a narcissistic person all about, but to open only that much that can hold space for my emotions and priorities in whatever aspects of my life that there can be.  I have absorbed enough of her and have her so stuck and embedded in me still that she feels like  the scar that comes with deep wounds. Maybe I can't bury it as if it doesn't matter and neither do I have to limit myself to thinking that my space for my presence, my aliveness, my being, my quirks, moods and so on has to be unimportant because it matters to me and I am responsible for owning it. 

I had gone deep within myself for few years now and have unearthed this truth that my emotions and feelings are a part of my everyday reality and just because I chose to neglect it so much that it almost felt lifeless within me and to bring them to the light of this realization and allowing them to be with kindness and acceptance and being the caring parent that my mother was never to me is my finding. 

I used to think that I need to abandon again all this darkness and sadness of not having embraced my emotions and feelings and was distracting and binging on tv or whatever activities that interested me at that moment just to escape facing the truth that I comprise both body and emotions together to become a wholesome human and that coming home to this truth is all that matters. It's not how ideal, or how I should or should not be, or should have been or not that matters, it's simply a direct sense of acknowledgement that all these highs and lows and everything in between is what makes life what it is and not hinged on how others approve of me (my mother or my other relatives) for who I am but my honest embodying of who I am all inclusive of - the good, bad, and ugly sides of me and seeing it for what it is without harsh judgements and minimizing my experiences is what love and acceptance for myself truly is.

I have wounded myself enough as well by taking upon others energies and thinking that they would somehow heal or soothe me, but that's far from the truth. Nothing more humbling, healing, and calming than seeing and deeply feeling this connect with my emotions which I now have started to interact with and express it wherever possible whether verbally, through writing, and so on are what have given my self the voice it needed. 

I cannot others to speak for me and be honest in doing so as what they perceive, project, and want to program me or others with is not what helps me align with my core self. It's still an unknown in many ways also but the road to recovering and meeting my true self is not a suppressed, illusionary, or minimized concept anymore. It's a work in progress treasure retrieval which shines like fireflies in every shadow cave that I had been hiding in.

Coming home to who I am

 Being raised by a narcissistic mother damages everything in my sense of self. Like how I minimize my feelings as if they don't mean anything. Like how emotionally invested I had needed to be in order to assume responsibility for making my mother happy, and doing so while being completely vacant and no sense of aliveness or joy in me. I have struggled to put on a brave face, totally "normal" in physical health and with a completely non existent side of me with respect to my emotions and feelings as if they have remained in eclipse, in total darkness under the pretext of a false sunny self. 

And I cannot really suppress this anymore no matter how much binging I get to do to escape facing this truth about me. It's like becoming aware that I am not fully numb yet and that there's still life left in me that I can cry and let out my suppressed emotions, my unspoken feelings, and my un expressed sadness, anger, helpless over having to cope with such a parent and in a complex joint family system which doubly multiples the confusion and overwhelm that I had been hiding for so long in the past that I became some kind of expert in staying in denial and not being true to my feelings.

But not acknowledging this truth and assuming that it could be seen as weak, seen as immature, totally ignorant, and blinded by all the coping is all true again but I can't stay stuck as an ostrich in the mud anymore. The path ahead is not what I am good at in terms of setting goals, or plans, expectations from myself and so on. It's just a beautiful phase of awakening where my hidden self can't remain in the shadows anymore and I do not want to be enmeshed with my shadows in order to survive at least there, but actually step out of my shadows to really live. And that in itself is the plan as of now.

It's more hurtful to pretend that all these don't affect or sadden me because they truly do, and it's not in minimizing all these experiences that I would be on the path towards self healing, but in staying with this release and allowing myself to slow down and process what my true self would actually want to be like and live like that - without guilt, without shame, without self doubt, and without limiting my space for seeking approval from others, or to put others job, needs first in order to keep adapting to a very minimal sense of personal space. 

Because I was made to feel so small (through constant criticizing, comparing, body shaming by my mother) and easily giving in to who I was made to believe I should be and I thought I should be that that I lost connect with who I truly and naturally could grow into. 

A human who has been programmed or conditioned to remain a fake extension to the mother's superficial sense of her self. A mother who is never emotionally rich but a controller disguised as a protector and it stifles the freedom and unconditional aspect out of true love - a true love that I can never expect my mother might reciprocate as she has only been keen on tapping into and squeezing my presence, tolerance, time, energy, space, flexibility, and finally my self in order to make me a shadow of a person who would  stay as enmeshed with her as always and remain confused to assume that it is love which in fact it isn't. A love that I had to work for and prove that I am good enough, healthy enough, smart enough in order to receive her attention if not anything else. But her attention only was like a snowballing effect carrying with it my father's passing away memories and projecting it on me as I had a lot of my father's and still do have aspects which was for her annoying and frustrating. 

I have tolerated all this so much and for each and every drop of a hat health issue episode that she almost knocked the life energy out of me as I had very little of aliveness left even if I were physically alright and all, but so much I had suppressed that in me thinking that that would help me cope up with my mother's emotional turbulence which is something I had to tiptoe around and shut down into further spiraling silence and numbness that my emotions even stopped to show up as shadows in the dark but instead became the dark. 

To live in the darkness of it all and to become aware that I have survived this darkness, and inched my way to face my feelings, feel my emotions, and see my truth as they appear now as my writing mirrors to me all these as they are in the light of my consciousness. I do not need to distract myself in order to unsee this and keep myself preoccupied with some or other thing to watch, to read, to learn and so on, but simply honor this. Because this is a part I need to connect to to embrace who I am fully, truly and not avoid in order to disconnect this shadow side of me as if they don't belong to me. They are all inclusive of me and make me who I am.

I am thankful to myself to sit through this tough, almost tearing me into pieces phase but I also acknowledge that I have the courage to face my suppressed parts without fear, criticism, avoidance, or numbing. Because I like myself enough to want to take this chance with myself to deep dive and unearth what's beneath he unconscious and come out with various learnings which are many a time deep, true, emotional, and unique to my personality.

No book, no podcast, or no binging can provide me with this, and it's because I am who I am that my life mirrors what it really is and opening my eyes to fully look at it with calm observation, quiet, grounding, contemplation, and also journaling. 

Truth and faith - my offering to Lord Muruga

 To who do I owe this life? If not for Muruga's compassion, I have no say in this life which I call "mine." He is all I have, I know I will have, and my faith in Him is what I can given Him for the life that He has given to me.

My faith has been adulterated under various kinds of stagnant emotions which swirled to get stuck in the  vacuums of my numbed self expressions. He made me realize the truth of my emotions and how deep, real, and expressive I can get in reaching out to Him. His compassion to make me feel seen through His eyes of wisdom and kindness is truly a blessing which is unique to my birth in this lifetime. He allows His children to stray, to lose their path, to make mistakes, to forget to remember Him, and redeems all these misgivings of His children by breaking open the thick of their hardened hearts through His weapon, His divine Vel -  the spear that breaks into pieces any form of self deception and dishonesty that we may carry in our hearts. He reveals our ignorance to us with His wisdom,  His knowledge, and His kindness which makes incomparable and beyond logical perception.

He can be experienced as an emotion, as a feeling that's deep rooted in the waters of our inner landscape - He is the mirror that reveals how far away from your roots you have gone and how connected you can get by coming home to yourself. He is the purest truth that we can perceive in our utter stillness and love for Him. He is the beauty in our surrender and the tears in our unspoken yet deeply felt emotions for Him. 

He is one with each of us as we become one as a unison of surrender and hope for a life which is unknown, unpredictable in the coming times, but a safe assurance that no matter how challenging, unexpected, or difficult life may get, His love for us melts sooner than any problem that might break us. 

He is the mother and father in one, and a child if you perceive Him to be one, a Guru to some, and a friend to many. He is forever alive in our souls and hearts and even if physically we may live only so long, but He lives on  through His grace, His valor, His forgiveness, and His acceptance of all of us as He leads us through one lifetime after another in becoming strength while growing through struggle and makes us become aware of ourselves, of who we are, as we experience oneness in spirit, in faith, in trust in Him.

Regulation reset through presence

 Choosing distraction was a way for me to keep staying in disconnection mode. Maybe because I never knew earlier what staying connected with me really looked like, and also wanted to stay distracted after realizing this truth after years of staying disconnected with myself (no matter what means I chose to do so) was extremely painful. The fact that I chose to live outside of myself and didn't feel like my body, my life was/is a safe space to belong to was showing up as my repeated pattern of survival and not living.

The vacuum of living disconnected with oneself and not having enough clarity to express how deeply sad and disorienting it is, as if the the motivation to live is replaced with helplessness of living and no other choice but to endure or persevere with this is a dark space which I have become aware of and released/releasing this as and when it shows up.

Time seems to have become fluid as there's no dense energy or lessening of dense energy around painful memories locked in time. Energy to be as and how I can be on a given day is what has come up rather than performing for others in order to fit in to their expectations and projections. 

Earlier my life seemed like a trauma owing to my mother's way of wanting to see me as an extension to her and since she had passive anger around my father's sudden passing, she kept her wound alive by rubbing it on me. And therefore my getting hurt seemed secondary as her vocalizing about her shock/trauma/anger/frustration and everything in short about her entitled expectation from her life partner was met with disappointment and she needed me in order to blame, shame, and project on me as if I am supposed to be her extension and that extension should act according to her control but disguised under over protection of me. Over protection doesn't mean more love but more control in order to make me worth her time and money. And I repeatedly tried to fit with this extension mold not knowing that I was going farther away from my self. 

This shedding of all these thickened layers of survival skins I had worn and forced in to fit as I was simply not ready to face the naked truth about who I am without all of these "protective" gears which simply disempowered me. 

And so living oblivious to my real needs, reality, feelings, emotions and so on was like a default pattern to stay distracted and ignorant about being true to myself, and to salvage that I had kept trying to mentally use up all my energy in figuring a way out to come together through books, writing, art and so on. Giving in to my mother's repeated criticisms over my health, sensitivity and her repeating of her traumas over having lost my father, and my giving up on willing to stand up for myself no matter what, kept me under the survival shadow for so long that the darkness started to get uncomfortable, and I had to crawl or inch my way out gradually until I couldn't convince myself that I need to live adapting to my limitations (body) and suppress my emotions as a way of coping up instead of really living. 

This dysregulation had to be dealt with head on through the nervous system regulation reset and has been a blessing in disguise, whatever health issue that had recently showed up, and despite it's being present I chose to continue to be on the  nervous system regulation path until the end of the program that I had signed up for. The will to be present for myself is the most beautiful takeaway for me from this reset, and this was not at all comfortable but truly timely and needed. 

Choosing visibility

 Abandoning myself has been the safest way to remain invisible. As long as I adapt to other people's expectations, be listening to them when they whine, complain, or criticize, I need to be that listener for them and give in my boundaries, my space, my time, energy, and attention as if I don't deserve to have any of it myself. As if I need to seek permission from others or not even allow myself to think that I have a separate say in who I am and what I wish to do. 

Obedience was the most convenient concept and a self imposed limitation on me to contract and try to fit into that mold so much so that I lose sight of who I am individually. I have carried the weight of others expectations, their emotions, and their happiness mainly (my mother mainly in this context) as if I am just an extension to her and cannot be thinking of claiming rights for my own happiness and have a say on it. It's like a huge feeling of helplessness which I felt was blocked and wrongly identified with as my body and since I was made to feel weak, too sensitive by my mother and her criticisms and frustrations, I ended up believing that I am weak and that I will keep needing her support even if that means being criticized and shamed by her regularly - I felt I had no choice since I had no one else other than her whom I could say cared for me.

Others in the family couldn't care less and my aunts and uncles were too preoccupied and full of their egos and frustrations themselves that I acutely felt unseen, unloved, and scarcely cared for by them and was often made to feel the receiving end of their volatile emotions and moods. I again chose to hide, wanted to be invisible in my own world fantasies, and completely repressing all of these emotional insecurities that I faced at home with people like these who couldn't care less.

Hiding myself under so many layers of sadness, feelings of abandonment, and having to feel obligated to "should" and "should not" mode of restricting myself so that I don't upset them further. And thereby I limited my reaching out to receive support/advice/talking it out with others as I didn't want to be a  burden on them as I was made to feel like that by my mother who would get fearful, overwhelmed, bitter, and emotionally distant and body shamed me as no matter what I did was not enough for her and so felt at unease having to ask for any kind of support or guidance from any other elder in the family. 

Not allowing for myself the freedom of self expression was one major withdrawing away into suppression that I continued to fit myself into and to the point of being so dishonest with my feelings and experiences. 

Discover True Love through Thirupugazh

 Thirupugazh is not simply a Tamizh poetic compositions dedicated to Lord Murugan but is a beautiful reality depicting the cosmic universe within and outside of the Lord. Just as the shiny stars from afar dotting the vast shadows of the evening and night sky shine in their own unique light, the same way our inner truths, realizations of our ignorance, and wisdom gleaned from the truths deeply felt and resonated with are the stars that shine above the web of shadows of our mind and old programs/influences. Both cannot be separated but they stand unique and distinct in their own nature as if depicting that it's always light over darkness because darkness is simply a huge canvas set against the backdrop for light of stars to shine through. 

The focus then remains on the  stars, captivated by their presence,  their alignment, and their coming together to complete the picture above and as if mirroring our inner world within each of us. As we choose and allow ourselves to step into the truth of our selves, of who we are, flowing through blocks and barriers that make way eventually as the brokenness of our lies, our ego, our personality that we justify is owing to our success and wanting to prove a point or two to others with that, gets all torn apart as pieces of an old mirror. We cannot stitch ourselves back into the fabric of our old patterns no matter what we project from the past, it just simply stands out and cannot glue us back into our old selves, which is a relief and a painful or uncomfortable transformation in short.

Saint Arunagirinathar is that unique and brightest shining star who leads the way even in the midst of a thick blanket of darkness to open the heart and mind and who seek to follow with their soul. His gems in writing are vast, so purely honest and true in his devotion to Lord Muruga that the poems/sonnets written by him become the opening portal for the lost, the confused, the helpless amongst us to seek refuge. 

As our own inner darkness threatens/challenges to engulf us, Arunagirinathar's love for Muruga  becomes the bridge to cross this unknown space in us which is equally vast like the night sky.

Truly, love does find a way and it brightens the path like a flicker of hope, like a sudden idea to nudge us towards clarity, like perseverance against odds, like reassuring support when feeling helpless, and letting go of our old patterns and twisted or spiraling pathways to find our way back into discovering our real, true inner strengths. Because loving ourselves doesn't need a reason as love simply is the reason and finding that love for ourselves and for the higher energy within us is what divine poems/hymns like Thirupugazh teaches us.

It's time for the shift in you!!!

 There's always a season, a time for things to be the way they are. They seem like that will be the way forever, but it isn't. Time is not static, linear, or simply proportionate to one's emotions, feelings, and experiences. Time feels like it has stopped when there seems to that one conclusive moment that feels so interconnected with the past and the present and no worries whatsoever about the future arises, and there's another when time feels frozen, static as if there's no energy left in it to be moving, flowing, and it feels stuck in the mind, in the body, in survival mode.

We learn to survive our variations of times and our association with it is owing to our relative feelings that we might be feeling at that point of time and so our association with our memories seem timeless, as if it can be retrieved or it cannot be forgotten no matter what, depending upon the emotions it evokes within us while recollecting it. 

Do we adapt to our growth as a human being in our given span of time or can we say we live, we mature to grow, not live to survive from time to time until we die. Death is anyways inevitable, but aliveness in a person need not die at the cost of living one's patterns day in and day out and justifying it as everyday routine. 

We need routines but if we keep adapting to our victimhood versions of ourselves from our past, then we make our entire life and existence seem small as if there's nothing more to life than just adapting to playing small, feeling wronged, spreading toxicity and bitterness, jealousy, hatred on others disguised as vulnerability and weakness.

Nothing can bring back lost opportunities and lost time to make the past things right. We can only try to set right how attached we are still to our past and loosen its grip on us, if we allow it to happen and step into truer versions of ourselves one day at a time.

Time is not a mirror that should reflect our expectations from life. Time is presence of one's energy from one moment to another. The heaviness or lightness that that particular moment in time that's frozen is what needs to be addressed. Not relived as if time has stopped and life is supposed to adapt by itself in order to put us back in a harmonious flow in sync with our resources, support and life situations. Because life continues even if our time on earth dies. 

So, live without regrets, without shame, or blaming others. What you gift yourself in return is the freedom of being true to yourself and loving yourself for it. Because your self expression is not separate from you - it's an all new you way of seeing yourself and feeling good about it because you deserve it. Because you only live once as yourself in this lifetime.