The strength of the Lion

My EMDR¹ therapist sets the scene in a dark room, with a large white screen on one of the walls.

– « Close your eyes », she says.
I hear a first drop of water in my left ear. Right ear. Left. Splash. Splash. Like a faucet not completely turned off, would sound. One tear at the time.
I imagine an old movie theater where the projector in my back, is the only light. I’m the only audience member and, I can project whatever story I want to see. My therapist would like me to start with the image of an animal.

– « A lion », I say. This is the second time I think of a lion in our exercises. The lion represents strength, wisdom, calm and safety. 
– « Get closer. Look at the details of that lion. »
A lion is walking towards me in the light of the early morning. I’m back to Africa. The lion is calm. Nothing can bother him. He doesn’t feel unsafe, he is a lion. Old, but not too old. Wise.

– « You are that lion »
– « I am that lion. I’m strong and confident. He is hairy, I don’t want to be hairy. I feel safe. No fears. Life is simple. »
By essence, life is neutral but our perception can make us feel miserable. I carry both of these perceptions within me. Sometimes one is more powerful than the other. When I feel overwhelmed, I lose the big picture. Life is painful and I just want to die. I cannot handle that pain. Other times, I’m calmer, I distance myself from my environment. I’m able to observe and see things in a different light. Things as they are, not as they look like. The big picture. We often lose the big picture when we are caught in the drama of the ego mind.

– « Imagine you are being put in a cage. »
It is a small cage. I can’t really explore. I can only lay down and look at Africa through the metal bars. I’m not angry. It would be counterproductive to bite the cage. I worry they will take me away from the place I love. But at the present moment, there is nothing I can do. Only wait and observe. I need to understand. Understand helps me to calm down, make sense and accept.
If I was the cage?
My purpose is to trap things, people or anything so, I trap. Nothing personal against the lion. It is in my nature to trap so, I trap. Most people react. The lion could bite me and go crazy but he chooses not to. The lion is looking at the horizon line, accepting his fate. I feel the pain of the lion. I soften the metal bars and, the cage melts.
– « I feel what you feel and, I let you go ». The lion gets up and leaves the cage.
Most of the communication is not using language. In a conversation, I listen to what the person says. I read in between the lines. I hear what is not said. My body reads the body language of my interlocutor and, I feel their energy. At the end, most of what I learned was not expressed by words.

– « How was it to be in the cage? » is asking my therapist.
– « Be in the cage was oppressing. I was suffocating, I couldn’t breathe. »
I often need space. Oppressing. But, was it really? I could see the vast plains of Africa through the metal bars of the cage. Was I a lion in Africa or, was I in the obscurity of the movie theater, projecting a cartoon of my imagination?
A lion was reminded how precious his freedom is, when he lost it. He had taken it for granted. Maybe I tasted how it is like to be free. A cage which nature is to trap realized that she has the choice to do otherwise. Maybe I learnt to melt the metal bars of my mental cage.
Our reality is limited by how we conceptualize our idea of the world. Thoughts that we interiorized, making them real. The Inuits have 52 words to refer to snow and ice. I feel more emotions, that I know words to express them. How would the world be, if I could name them all? Perhaps, as rich as my inner world.

I’m in bed and I can’t sleep. Midnight thinking. Imaginary conversation. I told my therapist we met in Africa.  We are no longer that eclectic couple: a French girl and an Israeli guy, living in Cyprus. No one is asking me anymore how we have met. That story is no longer told. People don’t realize how much is gone. I miss the conversations we will never have. This is lost too.

It was a good session: I figured out what was underneath the guilt, what was that resentment about. An absence of freedom, a restricted space to express myself and, just be me.
And, I returned to Africa. I told our story. That’s a good story.

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[1] Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy works well in case of trauma, PTSD or negative inner beliefs. Both sides of the brain are stimulated alternatively. This therapy started with eye movement in the late 80s. Now, on zoom, my therapist is using sound (a beep alternately in the left and right ear). Some therapist make you recall the trauma and work with the emotions that come up. My therapist recalls my emotions by setting an imaginary scene and makes me use my imagination to resolve the trauma.

Death Café or, The loss of the body

The other Monday, I was participating to a Death Café and I cried. I was not sure why. These were not tears of sadness.
Death cafés are places where strangers meet, over tea and cake, to talk about death. It sounds spooky, odd and morbid but, it is not. When we talk about death ultimately, we talk about life… and love.

When Nati took his life, his death cracked me open. He was my lighthouse and, I am left, lost in the dark. In moments of great pain and deep vacuity, I contemplate that door he left opened. From time to time, the knob is nagging at me. I am seized by dizziness.

I had this clear dream not long after he died:

We are in our respective cars, side by side, like if we were ready to engage in a race, on a dusty dirt road. No starting pistol. We drive side by side in the dust. The road becomes narrow. There is space for only one car. You speed up and pass before. I follow you. The road continues along the cliff edge of a grand canyon. You disappear ahead in a dusty cloud. The road is getting narrower. Red flags, safety barriers, construction site ahead. I have to stop. I understand I can’t follow you on that road. I get off the car, look at the horizon. A dusty point. You are no longer here. Silence. I have to stay on this side of life.

I have been struggling with the acceptance of his death because I know he is not dead. I have been struggling with guilt as well, because I can’t say I miss him.
That day, at the Death Café, a lot was said about the loss of the body. And I understood what I was missing. I miss his physicality. I miss the sound of his voice, his laughter. I miss his long silhouette in the kitchen, as he was making diner. I miss laying a kiss, on the back of his neck, while he was preparing his flight plan. I miss holding his hand. I miss his body. I mourn for the loss of his body.

I realize some of my pain is caused by the physical separation. But I know, that death is only a compartment of life.
The partition wall between life and death is as thin as a sheet of paper and, sometimes it tears up. Messages oozes through. Both ways. Synchronicities appear. I saw an arm reaching for me in the Antarctic sky. I saw a flower falling down on my laps, on a Cypriot beach. A bird kissed my nose. And sometimes, worlds meet in my dreams. The compartment is not hermetic. I know you are not dead. Only your body is.

I imagine you, the nose pressed against the window of that compartment, looking at me and trying to get my attention by all means. Paper planes with broken wings a couple of times. I’m listening like a child, with a tin can telephone pressed to my ear, hoping you are pressing the other side, to your ear too.
We are apart from each other, only by a thin sheet of paper. And, that gives me comfort.

As I walk in the streets of San Miguel, I’m thinking: You left with a piece of me. My body feels like an empty container and yet, I feel so much life and love, at the same time. When we have nothing to lose, nothing to look forward, nobody to love; we are open to life and we love everybody. This is why I cried. These were not tears of sadness.

And then, I notice on the cobblestones, two small feathers rolling all over each other, pushed by the wind. I thought of a couple, making love. A small feather and a bigger one. It could be as well, a wink from Nati. I stop and I pick them up, to save them in my wallet with all the other ones. The little things in life. These were tears of love.