September 19th 2013
One of my shadows came out into the open last night. It is amazing that no matter how aware we may think we are, we can still be essentially blind to our own patterns. When I was fifteen, I fell in love for the first time with a boy named Trevor. He was a red headed hockey player from Alaska. Ironically, his father was a friend to my mother way back when she was in college. To say that I loved him is an understatement. I loved him so completely, I felt like I had lost my soul. We were together until I was 18 years old. It was a long distance relationship. We barely saw each other. But it felt like my life hung on the letters he would send me through the mail. That love was the only thing I had to hold on to during those years of abuse. I never told him what was happening to me at home. All he knew was that I was getting more and more unhappy. Being a “golden boy”, his life was all about success. He had not suffered much in life; just worked hard to be the captain of every sports team he was on and an honors student etc. His list of accolades could go on for miles. Needless to say he had a very hard time relating to the way I hated life. When I was 18, a boy I knew back in Utah proposed to me. I cried when he proposed and refused him because being proposed to made my heart sink. It sank because of how much it let me know that I loved Trevor. I flew up to Alaska to see him on a moments notice after having not seen him for over half a year. In the journal entry I wrote on the airplane on the way there I said, “I’m praying it will be the same as it always was between us. I’d rather die than find out that the time that has passed between us has ruined us for each other; I’m so afraid of that.” Well, my worst fears did come true.
When I got to Alaska, things were different. He was less enamored with me because I had become too “dark and depressing”. My self-inflicted cuts embarrassed him (and I think scared him a little). He became cold towards me and even elected to spend time away from me with the other boys on his hockey team while I was there. The rejection was more than I could handle. At the end of the trip, he read my journal entries in secret about how I felt and he started crying. He apologized and spent the last two days of the trip trying to show me love. But the damage had already been done. The fact that someone that I was so utterly in love with, could look at me like all the Mormons looked at me back home, destroyed my self-confidence completely. My heart broke. It was the root from which all of my romantic problems would grow. I adopted the unshakable belief that I was too dark to love. I believed that no man could love me with my problems. It didn’t help that my childhood abuser would frequently tell me that no man wants “spoiled merchandise”. By spoiled merchandise of course he was referring to the fact that my arms and rib cage were covered in scars (ironically, many of those scars were caused by him). Anyway, when I left both Trevor and I cried at the airport. Flying home, I felt this terrible sense of emotional severing. It was motivation enough to devise a plan to run away from my home to live near him. That plan was foiled upon my return.
When I got back home, I walked in the front door of my house and visited for ten minutes with my parents and then noticed that my dog wasn’t anywhere to be found. I asked them “where is Sidney?” My father said, “Sidney died while you were away”. Suddenly the room started spinning. I felt sick to my stomach. Sidney (my dog) was not just a pet. He was the only friend I had other than my horse (which had been sold earlier that year). He had slept in my bed every night with me since I was young. They explained that my childhood abuser (let’s call him Doc) had come over to inspect him because he was acting weird (panting hard etc.) and had informed them that he had to be put down. And so, he did. Right there on the spot. My parents had no idea what that meant. But I did. I ran out the door. I sat in the grass rocking myself back and forth and crying. Sure enough, when I saw Doc again, he informed me that his death was a punishment for going away. He said to me, “If you don’t call it quits with him (meaning Trevor), I’ll put your brother to sleep too”. And so, that night, I called Trevor on the phone. He told me that he missed me so much that it hurt. Trevor was the love of my life, but as far as I was knew, I had to decide between love or my brother’s life. And that is the kind of choice that already has an answer before it is asked. I knew Trevor wouldn’t accept the break up without a good reason. And so I gave him one. Trevor was the type who requires strict fidelity in a mate. So I told him the lie that I didn’t feel the same way about him and that I had slept with another man. His world was shattered. The relationship was over and I stopped thinking that it was possible to find someone who I truly loved. I gave up on life as well. Having lost the last tiny thread of hope I held on to for my future, I accepted the fact that I would be stuck with Doc and the cults he belonged to for the rest of my life. I tried to commit suicide twice that year. And ever since then, I have felt like I am just too dark and the effects of my past are just too big for a man to love me past the phase of initial excitement.
I was on a modeling shoot when I was seventeen years old and a man at the photo shoot (who loved cars) told me that all women can be related to a type of car. According to him, the unappealing, mean women are like rusted Buicks that you don’t even want to drive. The women who are homely but friendly are like your basic Ford Taurus; there isn’t much special about them, but they never let you down and they are low maintenance. The pretty girls who aren’t very smart are like Honda Civics. They aren’t very original but they handle well and they only need a little basic maintenance. The pretty, smart girls are like BMWs. They take a little more maintenance, but it is worth it because they make you look like you’ve got your shit together. And then there are the women who stop traffic. They are not just pretty, they are gorgeous and they are intelligent too. Those women are like Ferraris. They take a lot of maintenance and you have to order out all the parts that make them work but they are unforgettable and driving them, is what dreams are made of. This man told me that I was like a Ferrari. It was a compliment when he said it to me 12 years ago, but it has become the symbol of my terrible self-concept relative to dating. You see, I feel like I’m that Ferrari that a man is so excited to buy, until he drives it home and finds out that he has purchased a “lemon” (In other words a car that is found to be defective only after it is purchased). And true to form, I’ve attracted an endless parade of men who have reinforced this belief for me. They end up deciding that being with me is just too hard. They end up feeling like my problems are too big for them and that no matter what, they cannot make me happy. They decide I am “too dark” and “too intense”. And it has only gotten worse since I took the world stage as a spiritual guide. People expect that I have transcended all of the effects of my childhood abuse and are surprised to find that I still struggle in any way. They think my world is all sunshine, gumdrops and roses. When it isn’t. They don’t realize that throughout my years of torture, as a way to escape my abuse, I learned how to increase my frequency to such a degree that I am an exact vibrational match to the frequency of my higher self. And thus, when I am teaching, I often hold a different perspective (a much more transcendental perspective) than I do when I am fully participating in my limited physical perspective. They do not understand that the work of my life is to marry those two perspectives so that the vibrational gap between them disappears; at which point I will be a walking embodiment of my higher self. But in order to do that, I cannot run from my physical perspective by trying to “transcend” it. To try to transcend it is to run away from it by trying to rise above and away from it. I can only fully integrate these perspectives and become the truest expression of myself by fully embracing that which I perceive as my “lower self” (and by doing so realize that it is not lower… instead it is the necessary cause and therefore vehicle for my expansion). People expect me to always act like the perfectly enlightened being they imagine me to be in their minds. And then, they feel let down or tricked when they see me seizure or get triggered as the result of a movie preview that reminded me of my past. And I feel ashamed of myself. I discourage men from pursuing me, because I cannot take the feeling of being told that I am too difficult or too dark. After all, that is what I have been trying to get away from all my life.
This week a very famous actor, who had seen my videos on you tube and had decided that he wanted to take me on a date, contacted me. We had been talking and texting each other over the course of a few days. I began opening up about my life and had mentioned the fact that I do not travel alone due to my past and that I still struggle with PTSD. And that was all she wrote. Though he complimented me on my brilliance, talent and beauty (in and out), he was disappointed to learn that I had not completely transcended my past. He did not want to complicate his life with someone who was still dealing with as much as I am. He could not suffer the pain of a difficult relationship with yet another woman who was struggling with trauma (according to him, his past two relationships ended painfully because both of the women had experienced horrible trauma). He said that he is worried that I am too attached to my pain and that he is not currently interested in exploring the darker side of spirituality (shadow work). And though I understand his fear, it hurt like hell. But there is a plus size to the pain… I saw my pattern clearly today. I saw it for where it stemmed from. I saw it for what it’s doing to my life. I saw that it has caused every break up I’ve had since Trevor. It has tainted my willingness to love in a romantic way. And I have decided today that I am done with it. I realized today that I cannot ask someone who does not love my shadow, to love my shadow. But I can ask for a man who will love all of me…including my shadow. So here goes.
I decided I do want to fall in love again. I am ready to be vulnerable again. I am ready to know that I can be loved exactly where I am. I am ready to be loved with my shadow. I am ready for my shadow to be treated like a beloved part of my depth and substance, instead of like a shortcoming. I want a man who would rather move the statue of liberty to my front yard, than lose me. I want a man whose happiness includes my happiness (in other words seeing me happy makes him feel happy). I want a man who will find my darkness beautiful because he sees that my past and the effects of my past are the soil, which has given rise the lotus of my life. I want a man to see the beauty and necessity of my vision so clearly that his happiness is served in part by enabling my vision and financially supporting me while I carry it out. I want a man who sees the full story of who I am as beautiful… not just the final chapters.
