Essays from The Shadows
Volume Two
Without much effort, mainly because we have to, because necessity is the mother of invention, we get on and do what’s needed. Most of us only realise later what we’ve done. Maybe we never really give it a name.
We have this ability to hold two truths at the same time.
To occupy the no man’s land.
Standing in the spaces in-between.
Desire sex • don’t want how it makes us feel
Need contact • don’t like touching
Crave intimacy • can’t bear to reveal ourselves
Want love • have no need for people
Covet attention • want to disappear
Thirst to be heard • can’t speak
Yearn to be seen • want to feel invisible
This is something we are comfortable with, something we do without thinking about it, so seamless that we convince ourselves it is quite normal, just how we are.
But it is a learnt skill. Something we did to stay safe, to help us cope, developed alongside fear and hurt.
It’s not conflict. Not exactly. Not contradiction either.
More like… overlapping truths that don’t cancel each other out.
But also don’t resolve.
We straddle two things at once.
That list is not contradiction. Not in the moral sense.
Bodily truths colliding with emotional memory.
The nervous system saying one thing, the mind… another. The past whispering something else entirely.
How we respond to these feelings depends on the day. Which side feels stronger. Which has more pull.
Some days you lean one way. Some days another. Both are true. Without cancelling each other out.
There is nothing to be fixed.
It is quite ok to inhabit this space.
At times it even feels… snug. A place where we can view both sides. Without the need to resolve either.
Then it turns scratchy and weird.
We don’t want to be there.
We start to think it’s what makes us odd. Maybe we should do something about it.
We have been doing this for a very long time.
It is not easy to undo the knots and unravel what it all means.
We become so adept that it feels like instinct.
Part of how we process things.
Part of how we feel.
Part of who we are.
What started off as a way of coping with the huge feelings washing over us.
Fear. Desire. Terror. Comfort.
Or some mixture of all of them.
The result can feel as if we are a strange combination of everything. And yet not in control of any of it.
A slave to our emotions. At the mercy of our passions. Devoid of sense or reason.
I am not listing types of abuse or describing specifics. There is no need.
It hardly matters. We meet it with the same overwhelming confusion. Whatever form it took.
What else could we have done? What other choice did we have?
Most of us were young and had no idea what was happening.
When the mist, the fog, or whatever analogy we prefer, finally clears…
we are left standing alone. Trying to make sense of what just happened. What does it mean?
How am I supposed to feel?
What does this make me?
If we have the energy. When we have the energy. If we can summon the energy…
it is worth trying to make sense of these in-between spaces.
Why are we standing in them. Our personal version of them?
What put us here?
Which bits do I agree with?
And which belong to my abuser and have nothing to do with who I am?
If I start to separate them and look closely…
can I see where I have been forced into corners?
Reshaped to appease?
Made to endure things he wanted. Things that held no interest for me?
Do I hold these things to be true through endless repetition…
when actually they leave me cold. And I have no need for them at all?
Is it possible that this thing…
a thing I chased. Thought I wanted…
is in fact nothing to do with me.
And I would be okay if I never did that ever again?
We would be perfectly ok if we never touched any of this.
If we just left well alone.
I mean… we have lasted this long. So why mess with it?
Who’s to say it won’t make things worse?
Why fiddle with it at all?
What if we just pull at this thread. Undo this little bit…
See what’s there.
We might find truth.
We might find we can walk around this space and see it differently.
Maybe things are not quite how we think they are.
Things could be unlocked. Opened up.
A little light… let into inky black corners.
Some air. Enough to see what cobwebs it might blow away.
We don’t have to do it alone.
A therapist.
A friend.
Your AI mate.
Ask for help. Demand help. Plead. Beg. Scream for help.
There’s no need to go it alone.
Find someone to hold the map and the torch.
Walk forward with purpose.
Own the space.
Look at what you see.
Don’t be scared of the truth.
So you like that. Desire this. Crave a little bit of the other.
It’s not as if it was your idea.
Somebody… we won’t name names… taught you. Showed you. Led you into this space.
Claim it back.
Decide where do you want to stand in it.