shadowboxer tender_square “people will go to great lengths to, first, convince themselves that they are not part of this fantasy that’s roaming around in them. and then, depending on how threatening the fantasy is, when they seem some nuance of their own repressed fantasy in other people, they go to war with it, or go to war with those other folks—a kind of unconscious virtue signaling that people believe is going to protect them from acting out their own problematic behavior. and i say ‘problematic’ in as much as it’s not congruent with who they thought they were.” —joseph r. lee, “this jungian life” podcast, episode 182, confronting shadow: the work of self-discovery * on july 17, in my morning pages, i complained about a friend of mine. she was stressed with a new writing and editing job she was being considered for that i had been giving her a hand with. she texted to complain that she didn’t have enough time to write her samples for consideration. “just poop it out,” i texted her. “this isn’t like writing your thesis.” in response she told me that her weekend was full up with getting a new tattoo and going on a date with a girl. she dropped it into conversation so casually. this revelation from her floored me and i wrote in my pages: “am i supposed to be impressed or intrigued that she has a date with a girl when she’s fucking married? jesus fucking christ. i don’t know how her and her husband do things but it is not my business.” so, so judgmental. i relayed this information about my girlfriend to michael after, and it became a frequent point of conversation on our walks whenever i had updates about her new relationship. “i wonder how awful her husband feels being at work while she’s having sex with someone in their bed,” i remembered saying to him. meanwhile, my friend’s husband knew full well what was happening with his wife’s new girlfriend, yet i couldn’t imagine that he felt all that comfortable sharing her, even though he accepted that she was bisexual and wanted to explore that side of herself. * a couple weeks later on august 4, i decided to visit buzzfeed, which i hardly ever do, to pass the time. i came across an article that i wrote about in my pages: “it was confessions from people who were the other partner in an affair, and the comments in response to people sharing their stories were brutal: ‘these people are trash’; ‘these people deserve to be cheated on’; ‘these people have no business justifying their behavior,’; ‘they are so selfish,’ etc. every single comment was in this vein. it got me thinking about the ways i almost cheated on brandon prior to michael, the way i cheated on mike when we were first together. i don’t even want to be capable of that hurt again, it was awful.” reading that article was like rubbernecking at a car crash, i couldn’t look away. i sympathized with many of the anonymous stories that had been written—and deeply understood why someone wouldn’t want to attach their name to this shameful behavior what with the way our society cancels people these days. but i read the hypercritical comments with equal curiosity, as if i wanted to self-flagellate for what bubbled below the surface of my own subconscious. * in the last nightmare i had some weeks ago, i began hyperventilating in my sleep. michael woke me from the dream before i could wake myself, and the images spilled from my lips to him. in the dream i was calling for michael: crashing darkness at the bottom of the stairwell, the door closing as my feet meet floor; a sudden vacuum. i call his name out loud for light, he doesn’t answer. i call again. why won’t he answer? the box i hold is brimming, heavy in my arms. i set it on the furnace and fire animates what’s held inside. i see the shift as my eyes adjust to shape the blackness— something lives there. my breath is labored, laboring, giving birth to terror. the door atop the stairway opens, a shard of light gives me shadow and i am screaming. he shakes me awake and i am startled to be living. looking back at the symbols of this dream i am drawn to this box of unused detritus i am attempting to stow away in the basement; these are parts of me i want to remain hidden. when i place the box on the furnace, a system where heat activates and spreads throughout a house of self, what’s inside the box comes alive in the darkness terrifying me. i couldn’t see who the figure was at the top of the stairs that finally shed light on the scene in the dream, but my heart tells me it wasn’t michael. * two weeks ago, michael accused me of doing whatever the hell i want. this criticism rubbed me the wrong way, probably because there’s truth to it. when i couldn’t return to sleep at 2 am that night, i turned over to active imagination for support. in the scene that was explored, i met mother nature in a forest. in the response to our conversation after, i wrote the following recap: “originally, i was looking for ‘aphrodite’ again, but i didn’t think she could give me the answers i sought because she doesn’t speak. i was directed to take a forest trail. in the middle, i met a beautiful woman. she was wearing a thin, white gown that was very flowy and white, much like the figures in botticelli’s ‘primavera’: the sleeves were puffy but cinched, it was a very medieval look. her dark hair was long, cascading, and wavy. she may have even worn a floral crown. i asked who she was and she answered, ‘mother nature.’ i asked i she wanted to sit on the log that was nearby so i could ask her questions. i wanted to know about my perceived pattern of infidelity. she said that, while on the surface they seemed connected, they were actually very different situations and circumstances, and to lump them together in that way minimized it. ‘besides,’ she said. ‘the first time wasn’t really cheating; you didn’t cheat the second time; the third time you did; and now is sort of complicated area.’ ‘it’s all about ENERGY,’ she said. ‘what’s happened in all these scenarios is the cycle of birth and death that are all around us.’ this was why she said she was sent to me, because this is the motif working through my life. ‘everything works in its own time,’ she said. ‘this is why you need to *be.*’” * in an episode of “this jungian life” on animus & anima i listened to back in august, the hosts interpreted the dream of a man who had been the other person in a long-going affair (episode 76). in the context the dreamer provided about their current life circumstances, he said he’d been in the affair for three years and that the other man he was involved with was married. and i remembered thinking how painful it must’ve been for this person to be in such a long entanglement and i couldn’t understand how he could manage it. the host’s interpretation of the man’s dream was heartbreaking. late in the dream, the dreamer stumbles upon a work presentation that is lover is giving in a theater. the dreamer writes that his lover “doesn’t acknowledge my arrival and i sit next to the projector under the raked chairs where the audience is sitting, and i watch him present. he won’t be able to see me, as he’d be blinded by the projector, but i can see him.” the hosts felt that this scene was symbolic of his lover’s inability to leave his marriage, that the dream was communicating to the dreamer what they already knew but didn't want to acknowledge—that their relationship would never see the light in the way he desired. * back in my conversation with mother nature, we worked through each relationship i had questions about. “i asked, ‘why did i fool around with christian at the beginning of my relationship with mike?’ she confirmed what i suspected, which was that i perceived that my relationship with mike was going to last a long time. the fact that we came together and there was so much past between us, so much wanting to be together when we were too young to enact it, gave me the deep impression that we were grade school sweethearts who were bound to be married. in looking back, my flirtation with christian began before theresa took me to mike’s party where we reunited, there was energy between christian and i. i asked mother nature what that energy was about and she said, ‘you saw each other equally, there was a warmth between you, a shared curiosity; you could’ve been something together had you gone that route, and you needed to see and experience that to know what was possible—there was passion between you but mutual respect alongside it.’ mike and i were so early into our relationship, we had only been dating for two weeks when i fooled around with christian one time. mother nature said it was hard to constitute this as cheating—mike and i hadn’t said we loved each other yet, we hadn’t even had sex. after christian was fired from our shared workplace it disconnected our bond because we no longer saw one another. i was twenty when i left that same job shortly thereafter; i was young. mother nature also reminded me that my projections with mike are what made that relationship so bad for me; i accepted behavior from him that i shouldn’t have because of the narrative i had created that we were meant to be together (a cautionary tale). one of the other things she mentioned was that i felt i had to diminish myself in order to be with mike, and christian was an energy move in the opposite direction—he stood for a fullness, not a limiting of flow. she brought up my history of picking clingy men—that this is something i’m initially drawn to because it gives me a sense of security in a relationship based on my attachment style and fear of abandonment, but that i also chafe against this later because the men are jealous and possessive in some way, territorial of me and my time, and how small i make myself as a way of trying to diminish their insecurities that i have no power to fix—this is the crux of the problem. mike was a very insecure man, not only with women but also with his male ‘friends.’ he was threatened by other men in my life and tried to control me. he turned into a different person when he drank. he would be all over me as if pissing on my leg to show others i was his whenever we went out together and it really bothered me and i said nothing. i tamped my spirit down to be with him in major ways. i lied to him about smoking weed with my friends because he didn’t approve.” (for context, see “to_shut_him_up”) * i heard from my friend yesterday, the one who had been in a relationship with another woman while she was married. i had known that her side relationship fell apart a month ago; my girlfriend said that the woman activated too much of the trauma in her life—it was too intense to pursue. in our text exchange yesterday she also wrote, “i fell in love with a girl, but i’m getting friend vibes. i never have good news lol.” i wrote to her that i was sorry to hear about the love longing and the friend-zone vibes. she wrote in response that the woman was “legit perfect. i’m dead inside about it,” and shared a gif of spongebob burying himself in the sand. there was so much i wanted to confide in her during that moment but i couldn’t. she told me that she knew the woman from high school, and that they never really knew one another well during that period of their lives. they had hung out over the weekend and had a great time together. and i had to sit on my hands. “being lovesick sucks,” i wrote to her. i wanted to be the person that my friend could share all her mixed emotions with because i’m there right alongside with her. i just can’t say it. * “‘as for shawn with brandon, that was a different scenario,’ mother nature said to me. ‘a lot of it had to do with what you wrote about him seeing a woman in you before you could.’ she said after i let my crush on him go when i was nineteen because he was with leslie, i found myself in some key ways: i was embracing my own unique beauty; i was working in a career i loved; i felt like i was making a difference in the community and i had purpose. when shawn and leslie broke up, shawn saw me as a more fully developed woman and was drawn to that. mother nature said i also needed to experience the circling that happened between shawn and i to ‘hone my feeling perspective.’ she said, ‘you questioned whether what was happening between you was really happening mentally, but you FELT that something was going on even though you didn’t have the evidence you thought you needed to support that.’ and that was the thing about shawn, he kept waiting for me to make a move instead of taking any chances, perhaps because i was in a relationship and he was cowardly about putting himself on the line in any way. mother nature said i needed to recognize that shawn was ‘wrong for [me], that he was someone who wanted to do harm to [me], he was not to be trusted.’ i’m thinking back to how i thought i’d never get away from his pursuing energy during that period in my life, that leaving windsor was the only way to cut the cord. when i finally told shawn i was engaged and moving to the states, he stormed off and backed off. then a few weeks later, he started messing around with my sister terri and they became a disastrous item for a year or so. mother nature made it clear that my experience with shawn existed in sharp contrast to what i’m currently going through with someone else. this other man doesn’t want to destroy anything, let alone me. shawn would’ve ruined me; i don’t know how i would’ve recovered from something so toxic.” * the same night as my active imagination conversation with mother nature, i had a dream whose contents i could not remember but the message my guides sent me with the waking interpretation was clear: what was happening with this other man was happening because he’s the one. i wrote, “this is not to say that he completes me, i complete myself—that’s what this journey is about. but our union has so much thrust and healing properties and growth and renewal potential, it’s insane. this is not simply a matter of me falling prey to a destructive pattern in my life, as i like to simplify it in the headline version.” * i have often questioned whether the active imagination process is some masturbatory act, where i tell myself the things that i want to hear. but robert johnson disagrees, “in active imagination, the ‘i’ has to be there, interacting with the other characters, or else the ego would not be participating.” “it is not *active* unless you are participating in the dream with your feelings and emotions. ‘i’ have a feeling reaction. i am happy with what happens, interested, sad, or angry. the ‘i’ must enter into the imaginative act as intensely as it would if were an external, physical experience. although it is a symbolic experience, it is still a real experience inducing real feelings.” (“inner work,” pg. 141) my conversation with mother nature gave me greater clarity about my perceived pattern. i walked away from her in the forest feeling greater self-assurance, but there are emotions i am still working through. * “as for michael with brandon, mother nature said that i ‘needed to do that, to leave, because you didn’t realize how bad your marriage to brandon was—it wasn’t good for you. you were not matched in the way that you thought you were.’ she reiterated that michael had brought great gifts to my life, that he was the first truly supportive relationship i’ve ever had; i’ve grown up with him, i’ve taken more responsibility for things than i have ever done before in my life.” (for context, see “the_red_thread” and “it_isn’t_about_you.”) * with that increased sense of personal responsibility comes a wave of guilt i can’t swim free from. whenever i practice my mirror work, whenever i stand in front of my reflection with a loving gaze, hand over heart, and repeat affirmations to myself, the one statement i can’t say without crying every time is “i forgive myself.” it’s the shadow that follows me wherever i go. 211027 what's it to you? who go blather from