the ocean of me
is trapped
in a bottle
kept on a dusty
shelf
i am the crashing
waves
the storm soaked sea
i am a siren
who has been
silenced
i long to shatter
the glass
of that bottle
escaping his hold
but
he has made me
afraid
of making a mess
he has taken
my boat rocking nature
& left me
feeling
helpless.
contemplations on why i am unable to break the bind that my ex holds me with. i don’t want to be with him, and i wish for a world where i never had to see him again…. but as the father of my children, i have to try to be tame towards him.
but it’s more than that. i feel like he has somehow silenced me. it’s one of the reasons i left him. i am muted when i am with him. i am not allowed to be mean…to be my feral self. he is able to turn me into someone i am not.
but why do i let him do that to me?
that’s the million dollar question.
if i can tame the chaos of my life to meditate on this, i will.
i truly believe, that if i can break the bind he has on me, i will be a better mother & a more confident person.
it’s been almost twenty years of this. such a big part of my life ensnared. it was better for awhile, when i only had to see him on drop offs & pick ups…but since he has been unemployed, he is insinuating himself into my life more than ever…& i let him? why do i let him?
why am i afraid to tell him “no”? why am i afraid to stand up for myself?
i just want to be free again. why can’t i figure out how?
Quixotic Mama 
I completely understand this, emje. For me to break the hold of my own ex, I conceived of a purifying and rebirthing ritual, I could tell you about if you’re interested. Like you, he definitely silenced me. A second (or additional) thought that came to mind was breaking soul ties, which seems to be the case with you two. I highly recommend doing that. I also had to do that with a (quite literally) toxic person who tied herself to me in a nosy unnatural and disgusting manner and when I realized what she had done, I ritualistically broke that soul tie and began the healing. It’s vampirism for the soul. They suck the life from you, which doesn’t help you OR them.
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(And I don’t know why autocorrect added “nosy” in my comment after the fact, because it wasn’t there when I clicked ‘reply’.)
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i would totally be interested in both of these. will you email me about it? i have tried severing spells & protection spells, but he (i totally believe) has some strong fucking magic. he protects himself against my efforts to break with him.
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xoxo (thank you! i knew you would understand!)
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Habits die hard, and I suspect I hear echos of gaslighting past in reluctance to confront his intrusion, and how he influences your sense of confidence and worthiness. Tara’s got some interesting ritual ideas there.
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lotsa gaslighting… he is very good at making me doubt myself 😦
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Since he is unlikely to change, then it is doubt that is the adversary to be defeated. He will not linger where he cannot create the doubt.
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
EMJE – Ex effects
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And then, the title reminded me of this from Zen Flesh And Zen Bones:
8. Great Waves
In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler called
O-nami, Great Waves.
O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his private bouts he defeated even his teacher, but in
public he was so bashful that his own pupils threw him.
O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hakuju, a wandering teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby, so
O-nami went to see him and told him of his trouble.
‘Great Waves is your name,’ the teacher advised,’ so stay in this temple tonight. Imagine that you are those billows. You
are no longer a wrestler who is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing all in
their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land.’
The teacher retired. O-nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself as waves. He thought of many different things.
Then gradually he turned more and more to the feelings of the waves. As the night advanced the waves became larger and
larger. They swept away the flowers in their vases. Even the Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple
was nothing but the ebb and flow of an immense sea.
In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on his face. He patted the wrestlers shoulder. ‘Now
nothing can disturb you.’ he said. ‘You are the waves. You will sweep everything before you.’
The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that, no one in Japan was able to defeat him.
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Allowing someone, or something, to trap us, for, whatever the excuses or reasons we may have, will, end up badly, it’s, always, best, to, have the freedoms of our lives, at our own, disposal, because, at least, we’d be, the, masters, of our own, lives.
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