LOOK AT ME MOM, ALL RELIGIOUS AND SHIT

# 37…………Penpal letter from James to Gen (Love)

Good morning love. I’m not the artist you are. I have to go fishing on Pexels or the internet for my illustrations. I am such a luddite. I hope someday you explain to me how you create art for your poetry. I actually think that you are magic and all you have to do is wave your hands over your canvas and gorgeous images just appear from your mind.
I hope you’re having a wonderful day. I hope I’m going to have a wonderful day today too, but I just feel like crap……. I’ve experienced pain recently that was hard to bear. It was triggered by past trauma. I really would rather not get specific but let’s just say that current events in my life triggered something unbearable from my past. It defies logic that something that happened so long ago , could make me feel so emotionally screwed up right now and effectively control present behavior . Feeling angry and hurt and defensive because something remotely resembles the past somehow is ridiculous. This is the third day of feeling like I’d been shot in the chest. It doesn’t hurt right now as it did in the beginning and it’s getting better. I’m trying to be the “ Jim Whisperer “. I’m doing pretty well at controlling the wild horse inside of me but he hasn’t totally settled down yet. My sleep is screwed up and I can’t write anything untill now, because I’m angry and scared. Yes, I am a hot mess.
Well I got a rude awakening that I still have extreme trauma inside of me and dammit, it’s still running me a lot. Apparently I’ve got a little bit more housecleaning to do in my subconscious mind. It’s not going to be fun and there’s going to be a lot of crying of emotion being spent. I thought I cleaned my attic but I guess there’s a big pile of shit over in the corner. Thank you for understanding Genevieve. You are a true friend that would be able to see my traumatic pain. I never saw this coming. Even though it did not make sense to you because it came out of my crazy mind, I knew you would understand . You have a Midas touch Genevieve. You have a way of being able to talk me off of the ledge so to speak. When I get out of my head, you help bring me back down to earth because you tell me new ways that I can look at trauma and new ideas for ways to be able to let it go. That’s one of the reasons why I love the person that you are . (Can’t a guy say that without everybody getting their panties in a bunch ?. I love you sucker and I don’t care who knows it so ha ha.)
I had no idea that I could experience such a traumatic psychological trigger after all this time.. This is a great example of how long trauma can last inside of your mind……………………...forever ! ! !
Psychological triggers are not always centered in logic. Sometimes situations can be reminiscent of some previous psychological event. If the situation and the actors are prominent, a person’s reaction might be extreme. Inside it feels like the pain and horror of the previous incident is happening again. It defies logic and it’s based purely on emotion. Gen, I know that I love you and I feel all of the emotions that goes with knowing you as my dear friend.. It’s not the kind of love where I would need to change my life in any way, except for the better.
You are such a pure delight Gen. How could anybody not want to hold you and keep you somehow. If I’m walking down the street and I find a diamond ring laying on the sidewalk, I know that belongs to somebody else but it doesn’t keep me from wanting to admire it and hold it for just a little while. I can’t tell you how much I love our penpal letters with just you . . To me it’s a little sacred piece of paradise where I can bear my soul to you and you can bear your soul to me and it’s our own private little playground. We have both experienced so much trauma that working it all out is going to be like solving a giant jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces are black. I have never been able to work with outside interference. I’m not able to deep dive into myself when I don’t trust a situation. I recently have ran the gamut of raw blood red emotions and ended up at stunned. I haven’t been able to write for days and that is very upsetting to be scared or sad for what you perceive to be a threat to you. I have extreme resistance to the interference of strangers in my life. With you, it’s different . With you I feel like I am healing.
Although my crazy reaction to some of life situations defies logic, I’m trying to see things properly
I’m sitting here listening to music and trying to calm my primate side. If you were to speak to my monkey brain, my monkey brain would say it’s time to fight and throw feces. But we are not monkeys, we are humans.
I don’t know if monkeys experience emotion the way humans do. I’m sitting here listening to this gorgious Karen Carpenter cover that is so good, sing “yesterday once more” and crying my God damn ass off.

Tony Lee is a modern-day Karen Carpenter but look at the audience members. They are totally transported to a magic place. You can see it on everybody’s faces. This girl isn’t Karen Carpenter but that doesn’t matter because these people are totally transported to a beautiful place.

I was recently transported to an ugly place . Gen , I wasn’t supposed to have that kind of a reaction to a recent event . The event happened to me a few days ago, I was shocked by my reaction.. I’m so shocked that I had an emotional reaction that was like a ricochet from some past experience. It just felt actually like intense pain from “yesterday once more”. I had no idea that a long past event would leap forward and hit me in the head like a sledgehammer. I got a real good lesson in WTF. I’d really rather not say what the event was and it’s not important either. It’s just the idea that something from the past could have such a strong effect on me today. This recent event being so strongly influenced by a past event was shocking to me. My past event and this recent event bore no real actual resemblance to one another.
Yet seeing these two events side-by-side made me quite reactive. My gut reaction was exactly like my reaction when the pain first occurred. The thing that happened recently triggered such a psychosis in me that I was totally shocked. My Spidey senses said, I need to fight or run because this hurts way too much to stay right here.
I’m sorry I’m speaking a little bit and abstract form. I’m a private person and I really want to save some things to keep just inside of me. That’s why I’m trying to tell you things without being extremely specific.
My subconscious mind is like this.
I feel like a soldier that has seen the worst combat that you ever could imagine. I truly have lived to see he worst atrocities and the worst tortures and they are locked in my mind. When I try to get home to the place of being me again, I find that there is no home. Who can blame a guy that is suffering that much, for reacting right now as well as then. I have such anger that it has manifested itself in my sleep. So many times my wife has woken me up by shaking me because I scream and scream on and on and I never stop and then I looked down and find blood on my pillow because I was so angry I injured myself . I’m not making this shit up. That happened to me practically every night for years..
I guess the only reason I’m telling you this Gen , is to help you understand that there are parts of me that I’m trying to gain control over but apparently I still have some work to do.
This recent event that happened to me that was triggered by a past event, physically hurt me . I know there’s a bunch of people out there saying that I made myself cry but what’s the difference, we are just talking semantics. The fact is that I cried over this event that felt so similar in my amygdala. So similar that it activated my monkey brain, the part of me, that made me need to react in some way to get away from this hurt. I had to draw back as though my hand were in a flame.
This modern day event that was seen as a monster because of my past has really screwed with my head. I feel actual physical pain. It was extreme at first and now my logical mind is taking over pretty much. Now it’s just a dull ache, but it’s still there. Unfortunately it has really screwed with my ability to write. Most of the time, extreme emotion does good things for my writing ability. But this modern day chain of events that felt like the past revisiting all over again, has really messed with my mind. I’m working things out and I’m sure I will mosey on back to being “ normal “ me real soon but I’m sorry to say I still hurt awfully bad.