So, I led services tonight at temple and this always gives me energy, spiritual and communal energy to keep on plugging away at this life. I am memorizing 'The Song of Songs' by heart so that I can start the Friday night prayers with beautiful poetry. Yes, beautiful love poetry. Poetry about our yearning for love and for God and for intimacy. I am looking forward to memorizing the third chapter by heart and reciting it next time I lead services. The beginning of the third chapter speaks about the search and the quest for love; the finding and the losing and the expectant faith that it is somewhere. Oh, how I connect to the search.
We had our first Art Therapy workshop on Tuesday and it went well. I will post some of my drawings here but only once we finish the workshop. It is five weeks long. It was important for me to draw and to see the same drawings that I drew when my body was my torture cell. It was important to be able to draw this and to see it when I was not alone. There is something healing about being with others who are grieving and processing. Something about being together in this makes it easier to carry. Both of the women who are with me in the group are sensitive and caring. It was also an interesting challenge for me to be facilitating and participating at the same time.
My father is in the hospital again and this breaks my heart. Why is this relevant to my blog and to pudendal neuralgia? My father fell into a very deep depression or had a nervous breakdown. For months he could not sleep from anxiety about me. He watched me suffer and was helpless in the face of my despair, anguish and pain. He used to "walk me" (get me out of the house to see the life outside). On these walks I would talk about my desire to die. Must a child live for the sake of their father if their pain is unbearable? I asked him these type of questions often. I wanted to be granted the right to die. My father sunk further and further into his own despair. He lived in constant fear of losing me and became more and more helpless.
There is only so much that I can share out of respect for my families privacy. I tend to be very open so I am sure that I have shared more than my family would appreciate already. But I feel that it is important that I share this information because Pudendal Neuralgia devastates and destroys individuals and their families. Oh, there are so many 'if onlys' in this story and each 'if only' is more painful than the next. I try not to think this way anymore. But, 'if only', 'if only' the doctors would have taken me seriously in the beginning. Oh, 'if only......'
So there is so much pain and trauma and my father is suffering from severe anxiety and depression and probably from (undiagnosed) ptsd. He still cannot sleep without medications.
The Song of Songs is one of his favorite. I live his love and his deep friendship and faith in me when I recite it. My Abba (father in Hebrew) is a gentle, kind and compassionate man. He has always been so proud of me and so trusting and curious of my ways. When I got this condition I felt like a failure as a daughter too. I could no longer make him proud. I could only make him sad. And now he thinks that he is worthless as a father because his depression and suffering only make us sad. Oh, but love goes much deeper then that and many hearts beat together in one soul. That is what love does, it binds souls together so that they become one. I have learnt this from all this suffering because we suffer each other's pain.
How many friends do i have that are willing to suffer with me?
All i need is a few.
i know what love is, and i know that loving hurts
tomorrow i will visit my pops and maybe together we will read the next chapter of 'The Song of Songs.'
Goodnight lovers, goodnight survivors.
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