The soldier and I on the phone…

“You were talking about the other day when you were feeling my feelings. (Compassion And Psychic Ability - Standard Issue For Moon Conjunct Neptune) My despair and all that? And how you I’ve got this stuff in me… I may not know about it, etc?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I wanted to tell you something about that.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, my hip is killing me. It really hurts. I have a bad SI joint, do you know this? I think you do,” I said knowing he read my other blog (silently) for three years and pretty sure I’d written about it about some point. “In whatever case, it’s acting up big time. It’s throbbing. It hurts like hell which means I have to go get another shot. I get the thing shot with a steroid. Cortisone or whatever.” Continue reading Exchanging Energy and Feeling Pain To Heal: Scorpio and the 8th House

I have a friend who is having an incredibly hard time and there is little I can do, besides care. And I wonder how he copes.

Well actually, I know. He is faith-based. He is a deeply religious and transcendent man. But this last week things have really intensified and become ultra-frustrating for him, to an extent that has been painful to witness.

And it’s harder than ever to think of something to say. I just want the rain to stop. I want some relief to come his way though I don’t think it is coming short term. I don’t really think it is coming long term either, at least not in a way that can be sustained.

And today I was writing another friend about him and said this: “I don’t know. I guess he’s used to it…” And he is. People, who don’t have easy lives, don’t have easy lives. But I felt bad for using this kind of technique to make myself feel better. It is a strange way to assuage guilt, I suppose but then it hit me…

This is how people feel about me! Yes! My life is terrifically hard and virtually everyone I know… well I bet you a million dollars they’ve had this same thought about me!

“Yeah, Elsa. She’s got it rough. I have no idea how she does it. I know I couldn’t. I guess she’s used to it…”

::smiles::

Is there someone you care about who is perennially in difficult, painful circumstances that tax them way, way beyond the norm? Circumstances you cannot affect?

How do you cope with it?

Speaking of pain and that last artist post…I’ve had a personal crisis over the week or ten days. Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve not been posting so frequently and the freakish struggle I’m having behind the scenes is why.

Now it’s not that big a deal for me to have a crisis, because I have them all the time. I have a life that is full to overflowing with intense trauma and at this stage of my life, I can’t say that I care. I quite like being me and I could not be me…I would not be me, if even one shred of my life was changed.

So anyway, I was talking to my editor on the phone this week. He’s a close friend and I was in a state of shock at the time, post acute trauma.

“I’m sure this is good for me,” I said. “I will do something good with this. I’m sure it will benefit me, I just don’t know how yet,” I explained.

I can’t remember exactly how he responded, but I know he was somewhat incredulous I would say something like that in the state I was in. A couple days later, I was talking to someone else and better able to articulate my feelings about this:

“I don’t want a life without pain. I have no interest in avoiding pain. I will take the pain! How else can I do my job? If people write and they are in pain, how am I going to be able to respond if I am not willing to feel? If I stay in my head about these problems and try to write, I will have nothing to say. It would be completely worthless. And I like feeling things. I like being compassionate. I like feeling things, period. And as far as I am concerned, there’s no reason for me to be on this planet if I am not going to feel pain and channel it, considering this is how I’m strung and what I am supposed to do…”

So what about you? How do handle pain?

Do you feel it? Do you seek it out? Or do you medicate it and try to avoid it at all costs?

~ skip to Pain - Redux

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pictured - Pluto, Agostino Carracci, 1557