Hopeless.

I have started this month of August feeling a bit weird. I have come to suspect that every time I feel trapped in my present, without hopes of doing what I really want to do in the job scenario, and slowly sinking in a depression I don’t want, I start to get in a past life mood from my Black Widow life. It wouldn’t be too bad if it was just me and myself, my thoughts, fantasies, emotions and dreams. I could spend a few days lost in my own world, barely talking and pretending I’m interested in some TV show or movie while I stare at the screen, lost in some old scenes coming from my mind and not from the TV set. Then I would decide it’s enough and I would be back in the real world, as if nothing had happened. But it’s not that easy when those past life emotions affect your relationship with your partner, who doesn’t understand why all of a sudden you don’t want to go out or don’t care about the plans for the weekend.

“What’s up with you?”

“Nothing, I’m just imagining myself in an old bathtub thinking how to slit my wrists, as I got married and this is not what I thought it would be”.

And if he demands some attention it’s even worse, as then he makes me feel as an enslaved wife whose only duty is to make him happy... and that triggers me even more. I go to bed thinking the slight discomfort in my right eye could be due to a reflection of my past life when I got it black. As I fall asleep I can only see the white gown I was wearing in my wedding night. I can still feel the fear of a maiden, the bitterness of a young girl who liked a different suitor, my heart pierced with his first threats. And it seems all this is because the prospect of being “just a wife” for the rest of my life brings me the same feeling of hopelessness, a dark sense of foreboding that tells me “This can’t go right. Don’t let it happen again. Just run!”

Well, it looks like I can’t choose. No matter how much I try, for now my plans are always unattainable. I don’t know whether I dream too much or my wits are not enough to make those dreams come true. Maybe the Universe is punishing me for being evil with my past life husband. In this case I wonder how the Universe is punishing him for being a son of a bitch with me. No need to say I don’t believe in any of these possibilities. Or maybe I chose a crappy country and a crappy profession to ensure I would remain unemployed for half of my life, so that I learn to be imprisoned in my own home and feel happy for being a great cook. Is that something worth learning? No need to say I don’t believe that’s the point. Whatever it is though, the Universe can’t prevent me from wanting to escape through a window again.

It’s hard to come back to reality and remember things are different today: my partner is not a monster and I’m not a victim of female roles or a sexist society. It’s hard to remember I just find myself in certain circumstances and it’s my decision to deal with them one way or the other. Sometimes it feels right to have the wisdom of several past lives on my shoulders. But other times I just feel tempted to follow the same path of self-destruction. When I've become tired of what the world can offer me, does it matter if I decide to get off, even if it's just for a little while? 

Triggered (2).

So, this is how it goes:

On Sunday I watch a Spanish TV show about the ordeal Captain Zaida Cantera went through when she was sexually abused by her superior. My past lives were almost a distant memory until I sat down in front of the telly and listened to her, especially the things she didn’t say and were implied in her silence but you could read in her eyes. As in other occasions, I felt the shift of energy in my body, and from that moment on I may have looked like my 4-year-old brother hiding behind a cushion when he used to watch the videoclip “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. My heart sank. It does every time I think about it, so I try not to think. I was about to get up and tell my partner I didn’t bear to watch anymore, but I did, until the end.

Though her situation was very similar to mine during WWII, my emotions mainly came from my Black Widow life. Katrina’s life was short, and sexual abuse was only part of the problem. I think the wounds don’t go too deep. The Black Widow is different. It is a longer life, or death in life, where much was destroyed. I felt identified with a lot of things Zaida was saying. One, that you just can’t believe it is happening when it happens. Her case began when her lieutenant-colonel called her “secretary” and tried to caress her thigh, in front of a few witnesses. This brought me memories of Katrina, but the rest was from a wife who suddenly was slapped on the face by her husband for talking with common friends. I once mentioned how much I liked the word “soul-killing” one of my forum companions had used. Well, that single second, unimportant as it may seem (after all, how many slaps on the face we experience when we are kids and we don’t remember?), is soul-killing. And while you are living it, you know your soul is breaking, and that moment is being deeply ingrained in your memory. Another thing I felt very identified with, was the silence of her coworkers. Thankfully, some of them were brave enough to testify at the trial, but most witnesses, fearful of reprisals and their military careers being cut short, chose to turn their backs on her and remain silent. I had to live through it all, and that is what still infuriates me: the silence, the hiding, the isolation... the agony.  

Well, I went to bed and on Monday I was still quite angry so I did some exercise and tried to keep my mind occupied with my daily routines. Then on Tuesday night I meditated. I felt intense emotions and two or three flashes came, nothing important. Still half “in trance” I did some research, I found my first house in Google Street View, I read my last words on the newspaper clip, and while I was going through another piece of information which said I managed to escape a few days before my execution with someone’s help, I saw myself taking someone’s hand and going through a window. I felt that piece of information was right, though I still had no memories of that escape. Then another link did mention I escaped through a window... and I don’t remember to have read it before, so it might have been an instant verification.

I know I am blocking memories though. Sometimes I even doubt I did kill the man that brought me to my death. I would believe my own words if I didn’t know how twisted I had become, how much poison I carried myself in my heart and how dark my soul was at that point, unable to cope with the misery and suffering a man’s hand had inflicted upon me. Perhaps I am blocking those memories because I know it’s better to have someone to blame than acknowledge it was me who didn’t (or couldn’t) find the way out of the hole I had fallen into.

The injustice and impunity that prevail even today in Zaida’s case is the same that prevailed back then, and that is my main issue. However, this morning I was wondering if that only reflects my ongoing desires of vengeance, as I use to say to people who seek justice. Maybe I was sick with desires of vengeance back then? The answer was “No. That may be true or not, but we have to keep something in mind: we all know justice is human, BUT there must be justice while we are here”. While I was trying to sleep these words —pronounced by a male voice, as if I heard someone saying them— slipped into my mind: “She had it coming”. Well, if I had it coming, I wonder: What should these men have coming? What do they deserve? Do they have to go unpunished while innocent women keep living broken lives?

Not even my past reincarnation as a judge can answer these questions...

1942: Grief.

Today it’s morning when I write, but it feels like a dark and cold night anyway. I meditated last night and unexpected emotions began to surface. Well, I was perfectly aware November is a tough month, but it had been alright so far. However, as soon as I started to concentrate, I felt my heart sinking, I felt the sadness coming out of nowhere... nowhere in my present life. Soon I started to see the church I used to visit in France, an impressive church, could have been a cathedral. The environment is grey, gloomy, cold. I am standing in front of a white statue, I don’t see it clearly but it looks like a Virgin holding a baby Jesus in her arms. I know I’m not wearing my medal with the Virgin anymore, I’m looking at her wondering why she didn’t answer my prayers, wondering how many more candles I should have lighted up for her to listen to me, wondering why my grandmother taught me to put my faith in someone who wouldn’t do anything for me, for Johann.

I feel so empty. I got some glimpses of a funeral (new memories here). I’m getting ready for it, I’m putting on my brown nurse uniform, including a tie. I still have a plaster on my neck, where the IV for the sedation was, I don’t know if I remove it or if I leave it there, half-covered by my shirt collar. I know when I last saw his corpse, I asked for them to let me see him one last time after I woke up, and they did. Now I know there is only a poor coffin and it looks like I’m not up to show my grief anymore, or maybe it’s only I have no strength left, not even to cry. So I feel rigid, tense, serious as another statue. I’m not sure where the funeral takes place, but I wouldn’t say it’s in the church, it looks more like an improvised military ceremony somewhere in our headquarters.

I’ve always doubted what came first, the sexual abuse or Johann’s death. Now I think I know. First came the sexual abuse. My intention was to tell him. He was the only person I could trust after all. But when we talked on the phone my words always got stuck in my throat and I could only say I was doing fine. What else could I say? He was doing his duty, in the border, in the front or wherever, he had something to fight for (not like me), so how could I be the one to worry him? And of course I was also terrified I could be overheard. And I didn’t want to get him into trouble either. So I wrote some letters to him, hidden in a corner when there was no one around, not with the intention of sending them out (what if someone opens and reads them?), but to show them to him when we were together again. I was a bit afraid of what his reaction would be, and least of all I hoped he could do something about it, no more than holding me and comfort me. That would have been enough. Only, that moment never arrived.

So, I gathered up the little strength I had left and told the doctor, though it seems this was more an impulse to explain my problems at work than wanting to accuse a superior of anything. Whatever the case, it was a big, big mistake. I don’t blame him for not helping me. I blame myself for being so, so foolish, believing he could or would risk his life doing it. Then the officer found out, and he threatened me in a way I prefer not to describe.

At this point these words from a Marillion song always come to me: “You’d starve before you’d let him get his hands on you again”.

I think that was the main reason I decided to kill myself.

More rubble.

It is curious how apparently meaningless phrases can reach you so deep and make you understand past life experiences. I often say that my life as Katrina during WWII taught me a lot about strength... but when I say this there’s another part of me saying: “Come on, aren’t you being too benevolent? She couldn’t get over her boyfriend’s death, she couldn’t fight and stand war, she ended up cowardly committing suicide...” Yesterday, while I was watching the Spanish TV show “Big brother”, where a water-polo player who became a drug addict and almost destroyed all his family and his life, helps violent teenagers, he said: “You see, the one who carries a lot of pain inside but doesn’t use violence is the strongest”. Those words brought tears to my eyes. I’ve always said the weak only seem weak in the outside. I was a tiny woman, alone in the world, unable to make my own decisions due to life’s circumstances. I was caught in a war and recruited to fight for another country. A certain officer abused his power. My only friend died. I knew I could have killed them all, or at least try... I was up to defend myself if only he dared touch me again, no matter if I ended up killed or imprisoned. But I didn’t, though I know I had the chance. Of that, at least, I can be proud.

For some reason, I still must relive all the ordeal. It was the third time I regressed to the night I was raped, and each time there are more details, and more emotions coming out. I will bleed until my last drop of blood is shed. I know there is no other way to stop feeling anxiety, to stop feeling so depressed when this time of the year arrives, and I’m writing it all down because I’m a writer, though I wish I could also draw like a child who remembers past lives. I would draw a German officer with his head blown off, or maybe a handsome German soldier coming for my rescue. I would draw a doctor who didn’t want to help me being assaulted at gun point and being raped too. I would draw myself trying to jump from a window, but instead of jumping I would just scream and scream, and cry and cry... I still have so much pain (and rage) inside I wouldn’t even know where to begin... though it was going to be very bloody, that’s sure.

Yesterday I realized there’s so much about “broken” in this life too. Until now I thought the major issue was the sexual abuse. And that’s a hard one, of course, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s about loss and being alone, about broken dreams,  about the only hope I had in that life being shattered in less than a second. My future was just like that scene of the bombed city, all turned into ruins, all dark grey and destroyed, until I decided I preferred black... and I painted it black. Maybe it was my only real decision in that whole shitty life, and right or wrong, at least it was MINE.

The last dawn.

That dawn was not like any other dawn. The Sun barely could be seen far away in the horizon as an orange-coloured ball partially covered by the clouds, some sponge clouds of a grey cotton which didn’t let the blue of the sky be seen. The wind was blowing as never before in the mist of times, and pushed the clouds until they disappeared in the distance, being replaced for others as grey as them. The sea waves, boisterous like they had not been from years ago, brutally charged against the rocks.

There were no seagulls soaring through the air in search of food. Nor swam fish in the rough sea waters, nor there were crabs buried in the sand. There was not a living being to be seen anywhere. That morning the beach sand had appeared totally clean and pure. No shells, no seaweeds... only sand.

The scream of the waves crashing against the rocks was the only sound in that silence, and the wind was now the master of Nature, making the sea angry and dragging the clouds after him. Only the Earth was left.

But then in the immensity of the beach a point that moved getting close to the seashore turned up. Who or what could still be alive? It soon reached the water, and went on walking along the shore. She barely could stand. Her body, almost naked, was covered by the tatters of what had been a simple but beautiful dress. Her long and dark hair was battered by that horrible wind which was becoming more and more violent with each passing minute. She had her shoes hanging from her shoulder, tied up to walk comfortably on the sand. Her legs failed her with each step, and she fell to the sand, nearly fainting, fearing she wouldn’t be able to get up ever again. But the last thing she would lose would be her hope.

Her green eyes gazed at infinity, and now and then they let a tear, half courage, half sadness, run down. She wouldn’t stop until her last drop of strength fell down and broke in a thousand pieces. She had to reach that place... only a few metres were left. She had waited for that encounter since she was a child, and finally the day they would meet had arrived.

A spark shone in her eyes, and her rosy lips let out a sad smile. Then she stopped, and stared at the line where sky and sea joined together.

Suddenly the clouds calmed down and disappeared abandoning their grey color in the sky. The sea became still and the waves transformed themselves in a layer of smooth and uniform water. Silence filled everything. Her heart beat slower. The Sun disappeared, and with it the light. From afar a thunder boomed and from the depth of the sea a muffled murmur started to surge, like a cascade falling into the space.

She fainted due to the fear, the joy and the exhaustion. The murmur grew... grew even more, and then the sea waters were pierced by a huge blinding moon that illuminated a hundred times more than the Sun. That light filled everything: the beach, the sky, the sun... She disappeared first. Then the light swept everything else. And afterwards the void carried the light away. Silence and darkness reigned for evermore.  

  

I wrote this when I was 13 or 14, according to my notes, though I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now. I’ve translated it for this blog and I’m amazed at how past life memories get unconsciously reflected on all we do... More than thirty years have passed for me to realize where this short story was coming from. Now I’m trying to work through the emotions and to remember in detail the events that led me to that day in the beach where darkness threatened to take away my life... and eventually did. When I started to write this blog I said I wanted to go inside, there where it really hurts... well, this hurts more than I can say, but if I force it I feel it slips through my fingers and I can’t do anything. I mean, emotions don’t come out when I want them to come out. I wish I could sit down, do some self-reiki like the other day, and let all the stuck emotions flood and get me like a tsunami, but it looks like it doesn’t work that way. They come just when they want: when I’m listening to a certain song with certain lyrics, when I’m with my boyfriend and something triggers something, when I’m typing on my laptop and suddenly I can see the same images in my mind, playing over and over again, making me feel sad and wretched.

Yesterday I listened to some binaural recordings again but it didn’t feel as right as before, I could gather some fragments together because I wanted to relive it all again, to the very second of what happened, but I wonder... do the details matter so much? When do emotional wounds exactly occur? What makes the deepest wound? The fear, the helplessness, the realization you just can’t fight and you have to let the man do with you whatever he wants, the nausea, the weakness, is it all at the same time? Is it the stab in itself, or the bleeding through days and weeks, piercing your soul like a sword through your heart that stays there making a zombie out of you? The only thing I’m sure of is that I killed myself while I was still paralyzed, I chose death to get rid of all that suffering, never knowing the pain follows you to the next lives, until you learn to deal with it, until you learn to get over it.... if you ever do.

For some minutes rage wanted to go out as well, but then it subdued and went into hiding again. I was going to write some words about it and then I just couldn’t, but I know it keeps being there somewhere in the inside... Sometimes I am told I have a lot of accumulated anger, but they don’t know to which extent... My theory is that anger comes from pain that goes beyond words, but once again, what can you do with that anger? I could have killed whoever was around me back then, they surely believed me nuts anyway, and I wouldn’t have been the first one to go mad during a war, but once I had the gun in my hand I only killed myself... And now the only way to get that anger out is through music, tears and... once more, writing. But honestly, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get somewhere...

Suicide (The Great Escape).

(As I promised in my latest blog entry, here is the piece I have translated regarding sexual abuse and suicide. It contains the Marillion song in full).

Sometimes I get surprised of the superficiality some talk about suicide and how some judge people who have committed suicide or have been about to do it. “Everyone gets what they deserve” or “Killing yourself is cowardice” are phrases I’ve had to hear more than once and I hope they are only a consequence of not reflecting or not knowing how to put oneself in the others’ shoes. And there are people who still think that killing yourself is equivalent to being an undefined number of years lost in the astral or facing some kind of trial in the other side for having committed an unforgivable sin.

It is likely that 90% of these people think I am insane, but I use to reply to them: “Do you remember having killed yourselves? Have you ever considered it some time? Have you fallen into such a deep depression you couldn’t see another way out? Because I do remember to have committed suicide. And I know many people who also did it. And not all of us remember what happened afterwards, between one life and the next, but obviously we came back and we didn’t burn in Hell, nor we were condemned to wander in the astral”.

Others think it is a matter of mental illness. Perhaps it is, or at least, there are electrochemical changes in the brain, that’s true. But I think circumstances are the most influential. No one can know in which circumstances a person was to decide to kill themselves. And therefore, no one, save ourselves, can judge.

The circumstances for which I decided to kill myself have to do with war, the death of a loved one, and also sexual abuse. No, it is not easy to say it. But it is much worse to live it. In a society where we are used to violence in distant countries, and bombs, shrapnel or executions of people guilty of rape accompany us while we’re having lunch, we don’t know what this really means. It is as unreal as the latest Disney animation movie. And however, it exists, it existed, and it will keep existing. And it is very likely many of us have been in similar situations and have made exactly the same decision which we are quick to judge now.

I always say it and I’ll never get tired of saying it: if we all recalled our past, the world would be very different. Because when we are talking of yourself or your relatives, then it is not so easy to speak lightly. And we’d be talking first-hand, not for what we are told by the different religions, philosophies or belief systems. 

Now I’ve got over it a bit more and it’s not so hard to talk about it, but when the feelings were burning in my inside and flooded in until they exploded, it was very useful for me to listen to a Marillion song called “The Great Escape”. This song is the culmination of a full album entitled “Brave”. This album begins with a scene which is based on a real piece of news published in the British press: a young woman standing on a bridge, about to throw herself into the space. When a police agent asked her name, the girl couldn’t even answer. Once I told a friend sometimes I had the same face that is displayed in the album cover.

A movie was filmed too, in case someone is interested.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Heading for the great escape
Heading for the rave
Heading for the permanent holiday

Heading for the winter trip
Heading for the slide
Heading for the dignified walk away

Heading for the open road
Goodbye to all that
Heading for the automatic overload

Standing in the open boat
Standing in the swing
Waiting for the ringing and the bright light

Waiting to be recognized
Quiet applause will do
They shower you with flowers when they bury you

You're holding on, you're holding on ...

(i) the last of you
Just when I thought I'd seen the last of you
You come here scratchin' at my door
Your pain and anger's in the howling dark
Of every corridor I walk

So tell me more about the love that you rejected
Tell me more about the trust you disrespected
I still don't know, why did you hurt the very one
Why did you hurt the very one that you should have protected?

(ii) fallin' from the moon
Don't ask me why I'm doing this
You wouldn't understand
You're asking the wrong questions
You couldn't understand

A bridge is not a high place
The fifty-second floor
Icarus would know
A mountain isn't far to fall

When you've fallen from the moon

There's murder on the street
I'm ashes on the water now, somewhere far away

I have fallen, fallen from the moon

The lyrics seem to reveal the one who should protect her betrayed her trust and abused her. And the music and especially Steve Hogarth’s voice keep helping me get rid of the pain and the rage accumulated by something that should have never happened. Although, maybe, if it happens, it is down to some reason I haven’t got to understand yet.

The consequences, who knows how often, no doubt can affect you in the following lives, due to the deep emotional trauma that implies.

ADDITIONAL WORDS.

I believe three months passed since I decided to put an end to my life until I actually did it. The scene where I’m standing on an empty beach, a cloudy and windy day, though not too cold, comes back over and over again. I’m quite sure it was the day I woke up from the sedation and went out to take some fresh air. Johann was dead. And I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry, couldn’t shout. We had dreams. We often talked about our future together, “when the war is over”. Now I was utterly alone, hopeless, scared to death. Didn’t want to live in a world where I could get killed any moment, and not only by the enemies, but also by the hand of people who had invaded my dear Prague. I was nothing to them. They had forced me to join the Army. But I didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t be there, in a strange country where they looked at me the same way I had looked at the Germans in their tanks, with their rifles and their threats.  

I was just a shadow, a ghost. I was already dead, long before I was shot in the belly.

Music and resonance.

I say this very often: nothing is accidental. Or... coincidence doesn’t exist. We still can go a bit further, and say “We are a product of our experiences”. We reincarnationists know this very well, but sometimes it is astounding when you really corroborate this is absolutely true.

Music is one example. It is just one more resonance, but for me it is very strong. If some words in a song move me, or stay with me, get ingrained in my brain even when it is not one of my favourite bands... there is a reason. And if I don’t know that reason, it is not because there is no reason, but because I haven’t found it yet.

Months ago I used a Marillion song to illustrate some thoughts about sexual abuse and suicide in another blog (maybe I should translate it and bring it here too). A certain part of that song always meant a lot to me, it says:

So tell me more

about the love that you rejected

Tell me more about the trust you disrespected

I still don’t know

why did you hurt the very one

why did you hurt the very one

that you should have protected

Actually, when I used that song, I was thinking more about a friend who in a past life suffered sexual abuse in childhood, and not so much about my own life in World War II, as my own sexual abuses took place when I was already an adult. Not that there is a lot of difference, but I guess it’s much more heartbreaking when you are just a kid or a teenager and it is your own dad who abuses you. I always take it as the greatest betrayal you can face, and that’s what the song is about.

But there’s another song in the same album that also means a lot to me, and I didn’t know why. It says:

Runaway girl

Too bad, too bad

Runaway girl

A real wild child

So you cower in the town’s forgotten places

and you make your bed with unfamiliar faces

and at last you’ve got your freedom

but that’s all you’ve got

You’re trying to make your mind up

if you’re better off

You pretend to wait for washing in some laundromat

but you’re damned if you’ll give them

the satisfaction of you going back

You’d freeze to death before you’d share a room with them

and you’d starve before you let him

get his hands on you again

Innocent of me, I used to wonder: “Why is it that I keep being so attracted to this word “runaway”?” I also love another song by Bon Jovi that is called like that as well. As far as I can remember, I’ve never had to run away and hide. Yep, as far as I remember... I have the pleasure to remember more than the majority of people, so it’s fun to think how for others memory is really so, so short... that almost leaves them with a fish brain (the same I had before knowing about my past lives). And so, one day, I found out that I did run away, and I had to hide in dark places as the ones depicted in the song. I had to leave behind a life where I had it all... except the love of my husband, the one who should have protected me back then. And now I’ve realized why those words make tears well in my eyes every time I listen to that song... especially in the latest weeks or months when this past life of mine has been so present.

Only yesterday night, after a session of self-reiki, more memories of this past life came to me, but nothing new... just the same pain, the same anger, the same hatred, the same feeling of walls closing in around me, just like Eowyn felt in Edoras. When I asked myself how I was feeling, my answer was “Like a prisoner.” When I do self-reiki I always have this lump in my throat, but not as if you are holding back your tears, it is more as if you are being strangled... which I guess is logical as I’ve been hanged at least twice in my past lives (as far as I remember). But I guess that if I feel it it’s because there’s something else affecting me, and I think it’s not only for the pressure of the ropes or my neck breaking... I think it has to do more with the fact that in a few of my past lives I was unable to express all that pain and anger I had inside. I always remember Katrina and her strong desires of CRY, CRY, CRY, but looking back at my Black Widow life, I see her situation was not too different: I was just a prisoner in my husband’s house, I couldn’t talk to anyone about the hell I was living, the few that knew counseled me not to speak, so I found myself isolated, alone, scared, feeling more and more worthless as I couldn’t love that hideous man and I couldn’t even bear children for him... I never was a submissive woman, maybe that was the only problem I had, that I never accepted the way he treated me or the way society expected me to be. So, I often went to the backyard and sat in that wooden bench looking at the woods, with my heart filled with pain, wondering what to do to end all that suffering... something which wouldn’t mean my own death, of course, I was not up to give up my life for that hideous man my parents chose for me. And I made up my mind...

But this ultimately led me to a path of self-destruction I should have been able to avoid. I had to leave my own daughter and run away from ignorance and gossip in my town, my family’s reputation was ruined even when I was declared innocent, and I only wanted a new life. All secret, all dark, more hideous men and trying to make money far from my comfortable and rich house that could have been mine, if only there had been a little love inside. I don’t wholly understand why I ended up getting married again, probably I had no choice... or maybe I had some dark plans in my head, I wanted so much to raise my daughter and have her close. All went wrong. Terribly wrong.