the Unwanted Gust of the Mind

LWP 10/28/07
Piece # 3 - PLACE
“An Unwanted Guest of the Mind”
sbrowder

My mind is a dark place. It is achy and flu-like. I feel sick with anger. I am locked in my “mind place” and cannot find the key. I am so angry it feels like it is raining on the inside of my ways. My mind is a gray and a testy place - skies filled with tornadoes and hail storms. No one dare to go near me or they may be blown away.
When did this anger slip in uninvited to my “mind place”? Was it simply a day last week? Did one incident open the door and let anger in? I remember smiles and I still hear laughter, but it has no affect on me. I fret over what has taken residence and rules my thoughts and emotions. I am even angry with those I love, those I do not know and even at myself. It would seem that I would of at least excused myself, but no, I cling to my anger like a lover.
Only sadness keeps me from imploding. Instead I explode. I do not hate my life and let sadness have its ultimate result - death, I just resent my life’s state of mind. I want to live but live with a promise - a promise that I will
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rise to a different level. I want to climb to find some new revelation of place and me in it. But, as I am now, I cannot find this place- hell, I cannot see the doorknob.
I can still smell eggs cooking in a buttered pan, but they have become rancid in my nose. I want to blow out all their smell like snot in a tissue.
I cannot finish eating the eggs. They are yellow and scrambled. They are too bright - that kind of yellow. These eggs spread out on my plate, spongy and messy. Yoke mixed with white, they are nothing. They taste like nothing. What does nothing taste like? Egg whites.
I think these eggs are crumpled nothingness. I look at them and wish they could become the fowl that struts around a farm yard, scratching at the ground. Instead these eggs are foul. I am done with eggs.
My dreams are an ugly place. Sleep is no longer a sweet scented place. Like an extension of my wakeful place my anger shows up here, too. Characters in my dreams are reversed. Instead of me being full of rage and nastiness, others fly at me. I whimper, pleading with them to stop.
My husband, who in my waking place , is beyond kind, is displaced in my nightmares, by some altered thing. My husband was one of those people who had a wonderful childhood. Then altered , when I came into his life, he
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spoiled me so that I became rotten and in many ways I think I spoiled his life. Now in my dreams he becomes the spoiler who abuses me emotionally, thus wreaking my mind with confusion and pain. It feels like he is taking his turn. It feels like paybacks.
I wake from my dream place disgruntled and broody. My mood is like a sour wash clothe that repulses my face with a warm pungent smell. I continue to wash my face with it hoping that the perfume of the soap will overcome the sourness. I wash and still feel dirty.
I am disgusted with this anger which drains all my brain juice. I am left tired and moody. I grope around in my “mind place” looking for a bright spot to snap me out of it. Surely there is some thought I dropped somewhere and by recovering it, I will be propelled forward and out of this room of gloom.
I think maybe my unquiet mind is like the scary tunnel ride at the fair. I sit in the car twisting this way and that while all along the way mechanical devices bolt up-right from the dark , dangling webs and cold blasts of air assault my senses. I smell something electrical burning. I don’t want to think about what it could be. Then it’s over and the rickety, steely car bursts into the light. Why won’t my mind leave this Haunted House and leave me
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free of this ride?
But no. I am like an anchoress living in solitude. Everything is filtered through my “showings” - visions of the angry mind. Only unlike Julian of Norwich, I report “showings” of man’s relationship with an armless Devil. I warn mankind to leave their anger like an old coat on a chair and return to God. Yet I am locked away, a self appointed recluse. I am the living dead.
Then one day, like an accident, I find I have walked out of the Keep, the funk, this fog in my brain. My brain, once so twisted and tangled with angst, now is strung out smooth, white and glossy. I am no longer denied joy. Was this a gift? Was a basket of goodies left on my doorstep? Or did I muddle through the anger in my “mind place” by working out my own salvation?
Never mind, I am free. My brain is full of new wrinkles, endorphins, and serotonin. I look out the windows of my mind and see fair possibilities. Julian of Norwich has a new “showing”. She reports a “showing” of the righteousness of God. There are many words of comfort moving in and through the rooms of my “mind place” to a pace of lovers, happy and full of desire.
* * *
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My time is up. Fifty minuets per session for five years of regression, I
have dug up every old feeling that latched itself to anger and swept every nook and cranny of my “mind place”. Emotions and moods are melded into parts and pieces that fit together like puzzle pieces making a new picture - a surprise.
Will anger ever set up residence in my “mind place” again? Yes, I believe so, but it will be a fleeting guest who is checking out, baggage and all. No longer will anger so easily touch all those old rooms in my memory. I find myself in a new place. I can walk around in this place from room to room, moving through, holding the keys to each. Doors can open and close. I do not have to lock myself in any one room, I live in them all. I am no longer thoughtless.
In my “mind place” I have found social salvation. No longer bound by old anger, my place is no longer cluttered. Will kittens and puppies dance through all my thoughts? Not always, but the difference is that new anger will not be tied on a rope to old anger. My “mind place” has new furniture.
I have climbed out. I found the ladder. I left the scraps under the table.
Look at me. This has been my little rebellion against being stuck in one place. My mind is a good place to be. I can eat eggs again!