merge the looking-glass
I was hovering above the surface of the water, on a ferry between China and Japan, contemplating the nature of my fear.
There was a time when I felt established in my concept of the world and of God, even if other aspects of my life were trying.
My concept of God was not unlike as a parent, encouraging me to grow and become spiritually mature and responsible, to stand on my own and no longer need parenting.
This concept began to erode and eventually decentralize, showering every aspect of the universe in a dazzling brilliance, as if to illustrate the riddle: Godisnowhere.
I described it to a friend once as though a long-time pen pal had written one final letter saying that I would no longer be receiving letters from them this way, and that they were not who I thought they were. I didn't know where to look after that.
This corresponded with series of other life-events that wrought general shattering of plane of my life. When I stand on one shard, I feel I have access to the life and memories connected to that shard, but not to memories or self from the other. It feels like it began the morning I was pushed through the ice into cold water and awoke, submerged in my lower bunk, disoriented, homesick for the first time in my life, and trapped, unable to go home. My room was an echo-chamber into which rocks were daily thrown. I first swam, then crawled out and learned to walk again over a period of years. I told myself that I could stay with things because if it ever became /that bad/, I was young. I could restart my life, and still live a relatively long time. In some ways I hadn't considered though, I had already started over, and shouldn't be too hard on myself for only being 5 years old. In the times I could not walk, I learned by being suspended from the mirror of the sky.
I still sensed within me an understanding and desire to know God's will and do it, and a trust that it would be the best way to live, but also a fear that God would call on me to give too much. But, in my difficult times, had not there been provision? Had it really been too much? ...it still feels difficult to volunteer for, although volunteering still seems like the correct choice. I feel conflicted, and I sometimes fear the voice in the sky, though I know that my pain is not from God, and instead, there was provision.
I am reminded the example of a child staying with a kind aunt while his mother is in the hospital giving birth to a baby brother. The aunt is kind, but the child cannot help but link her to the absence of his mother and may resent it.
I was hovering above the surface of the water, on a ferry between China and Japan, contemplating the nature of my fear.
I perceived myself two selves - one contained within me, and the other without. One, the concave reflection beneath the mirror of the sky, and the other spread broad and convex. One side of me, internal. The other side, more external. I perceived that my interior me feared the other, which also feared. A fear of harming, a fear of pain; a fear of abandonment, a fear of insufficiency, and both reflections retreating sadly from one another.
I perceived that these two aspects of me were interchangeable. And both feared. They might as well be one another. I perceived that they did not desire to fear, and that they should be friends. And they were. Reunited, I felt capable and confident in myself and in approaching others.
They were comfortable with one another for several days, until there was a test. I did not succeed, and instead caved and emptied myself like a ship trying to stay afloat, and failed to hold my sense of person, sense of limits of responsibility, and regard my sense of appeasement. I emerged from the scenario, but not with anything of value. I failed to keep from abandoning myself, and I do not know how to ask the reflections to trust again, especially when I am not capable of assuring their safety. They desire to trust me to manage, but I give them no evidence.
