The Hypnotherapeutic Wedding Catharsis, probably chapter 2

Bonnie had told me that hypnotherapy affects people differently, according to different rules and time tables. I began experiencing a difference immediately.

While my first priority in going to her had been to address the mantra nobody wants to be in the same room with me, on her intake form, which she sent via email the week before, she asked clients to list the 4 most important things, and she went through each one with me when during our hour-long chat before the hypnotherapy session Saturday, a month and a day ago. I didn't keep a copy of that sheet, though I wish I would have now, but I'm pretty sure I listed these:

1. Nobody wants...
2. Motivation/Focus on school work
3. Health/Body: maintain a healthy lifestyle, mind, body, soul, spirit
4. LOST (I know this sounds insane, but I've become pretty obsessed with this television show; I watch it several hours a day while I'm grading papers, cooking, cleaning, working out, changing clothes, whatever; it stays on pretty much all the time, though I have it off right now and during other times when I'm intensely focused on a task, like reading theory or writing).

We worked through the first one on the list; took us 4 hours of talking, me with my voice and with my first finger ("yes") and thumb ("no") jerks. It required past-life inspection and resulted in my "remembering" where I first internalized the message; the exercises we did together was supposed to have allowed me to replace that message into the body that received it and leave it behind, to cleanse it from my aura, or something. Whatever it was supposed to do, like I said, is irrelevant; what it is doing is much more interesting anyway.

For the first few days after the session, I felt like I was on top of the world. The situations in my life were unusually clear to me, and my position in my situations was also obvious; before, I'd not been able to see those things clearly because of the distortion caused by the internal mantra playing on a loop (for 16 years....). Within just a few days, the fog around me was clearing, and the reality of my situation began to dawn on me. I decided that I wanted to believe what Bonnie had said to me about my power and my purpose in this world. I decided that I am going to believe it, and so I have started believing it, and I am believing even right this instant.

(for 16 years is a LOST reference.)

This knowledge--that I am exactly what I am, and that actualizing that is powerful--didn't come upon me suddenly; it took several weeks, whirling around in my mind, and about a zillion speedtalkingconversations with Lisa Day, and a lot of LOST to get there. It was a few days before the wedding when Shannon's mother sent me the following email:

I have waited a while before sending this as my heart won't let me rest without speaking my mind. I cannot believe that you have turned to dishonesty for revenge. We only go through life one trip around and what we make of ourselves is just that. We, I, trusted that you were a good person inside and a fair one. Had I known from the beginning that you were just using Shannon as a stepping stone to boost your ego and advance yourself in life, I would not have accepted you into mine. Call it poor judgement, stupidity, whatever, you got what you wanted. I will help Shannon pay your debts...not for you, but to prevent her from struggling financially. That was very dirty of you to leave owing, but if you can live with the dirt, we sure aren't going to let it get us down. May the rest of the world see you for what you truely are! What goes around, comes around.

At first, I wanted to write her back and tell her she had it all wrong, though I respected that if there are "sides" to be taken here, as Shannon's mother, she's definitely on the right one, and more power to her for sending an email, speaking her mind. It's damn-near feminist of her, so I'm kind of proud of the effort and the intention. I ended up not answering at all, upon the advice of my bff. I mean, I agree with at least part of what she said: "May the rest of the world see you for what you truely [sic, and she's a fucking school teacher?] are." That's all I've ever wanted anyway, is for the world to know me for who I AM and for me to know that person to and be proud of her. I've just wanted exactly what she wants for me, so "we always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view." Tangled up in Blue, indeed.

Anyway.

I ended up also feeling mostly affirmed and relieved (by the email) that I'd made the right choice. Vicki's email might as well have been scripted by her daughter, and I got out of that whole situation to avoid just this sort of victimology. Even so, I took a lot of messy feelings with me when I got in the car Friday morning to drive to northern Kentucky to Zach and Jolinda's wedding.

The night before, I burned an audio book from Librivox.org onto disk for the drive down. Six hours of Willa Cather's O, Pioneers (1913). First of all, it's an absolutely amazing story if you've never read it and need a new one to get into, and second, I highly recommend the Librivox recording. The woman who reads it does a fine job.

I listened to the story on the way to Kentucky. It's about a six-hour drive, so I heard almost the whole thing before I made it to Perry Park Golf Resort in Perry Park near Owenton, Kentucky, near Cincinnati. Listening to that novel as I drove put me in an interesting frame of mind. For six hours before seeing Zach and Jolinda again for the first time, I had been a "reader." My mind was set to "spectator" mode, and I was ready to hear a good story. Turns out Zach's wedding had a few to tell me too. Being in this present-yet-removed position was at first strange-feeling because, typically, with the mantra, I feel disconnected from everything around me and isolated within my own body. Sometimes I used to feel imprisoned by the space around me when I was in public places with people all around me. All in the same room with me. Imagine what they must be thinking. They simply must.

But at the rehearsal, when I saw them again and met all these new people, the defensiveness, the fear, the self-loathing... all of it was gone. I was just there to play a part, to observe, to watch what was going on around me and take it all in. Being in the spectator frame of mind helped me constantly remember that while I was having my own experience over here, Zach and Jolinda were having their own experience over there, and it was, for this weekend, the most important thing. I felt like I could help that happen, because I had, sometime on the drive down here and amid O, Pioneers, I allowed myself to believe what Bonnie had said: that I am powerful, and that there is an energy and goodness inside me that other people just have to see to believe. It wasn't a conscious choice, is all I'm sayin'. It was much deeper than that; I didn't know I was making it.

But I did, and when I started meeting people, I was fully present, aware, in-tuned with my surroundings, and in control of my self in a way I've never quite experienced. I was embracing the power of being me, and I was remembering with each breath that this power has to remain in check, otherwise, things can get ugly, fast. So I stayed focused on what was happening right in front of me, and I let myself be a good, fun, smart, sexy woman in front of everyone in the room, and you know what?

They love me.

They told me so. Strangers. Walked up to me, spent minutes with me, then hugged me and said things like "you're as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside" and "thank you for being my cheerleader this weekend." Said things like "I am so glad I got to finally meet you" and "Even though you're a small person, you're huge!" Said things like "Zach never told me how hot you are." (okay, I made that last one up.)

I was blown away at every turn. I was letting people see me (like, literally, tiny tanktop at the wedding, strutting around in 3-inch stilettos, but also, like, figuratively, in that I had let my guard down and was allowing these experiences to happen to all of me... for all of me to happen to all these experiences). People's responses ranged from content to completely enthralled by my splendor and majesty. Everyone wanted to be in my room. And I was having the time of my life. Zach and Jolinda's wedding will go down in history as one of the best nights of my life.

I woke up unnaturally early the next morning and was on the road back to Michigan by seven. Ever since, I've been kind of trying to just process all that's happened over the last several months as it's been put into a new perspective by this weekend. Before this weekend, I didn't see the two previous events--the divorce and the hypnotherapist--as connected in any real way, but after this weekend, I see them as a set of three choices that I've made for myself, the first making way for the second two to even be possible. Something shifted in me these last few months, and I'm finally starting to reap some of the reward for the hard years and hard choices I've made these last few years. If it is as Zora Neale Hurston has written, that "there are years that ask questions and years that answer," I'm in an answering year.