Since I have been in this new habit of writing out lists of appreciation, now and then I manage to come up with some somewhat shocking and unexpected things to appreciate. The most shocking of these is this:

I am grateful for all the people who have hated and abused me in my life, including and especially family, because one who has been loved and cared for in life can never feel the overwhelm of divine bliss of being loved and cared for for the very first time.

I came upon this while basking in the glory of my love. Sometimes I think and feel that no one can appreciate this love that I am in with this man. Sometimes I am beside myself with joy and appreciation and love so deep for him that I begin to cry.

It was a moment like that that I realized the vast canyon between how I have been treated all of my life, and how good this man is and how he loves me. And I stand on the safe side of that canyon looking back on the abusive side and all the people on it – far, far away – and it makes me cry.

Me:  In my whole life, I don’t remember ever hugging someone who I was safe with. And you’re my white knight…I never thought this moment would come.

Him:  I knew it would.

Me: Of course you did. You always know .  Did you know from the very beginning, that I would love you some day? … I remember how in the beginning you used to sometimes ask me if I loved you. And I used to say ‘Believe me, you will know if I love you!’

You were so cute when you would ask that.

And you have a strong mind, you have a strong will and you’re decisive, but you are sweet and loving and gentle.

And I am weak-willed in most matters and I’m indecisive. I feel like I need someone more dominant and decisive helping me.

And you are a most wonderful and endearing blend of modesty and self-confidence; I love you so much.

One evening I sat in my room reflecting on life. As I replayed events and experiences in my mind, it appeared to me as if I had suffered inordinately in my life, either as a direct or indirect consequence of my concern and sensitivity for others, of my honesty and the respect and the consideration with which I treat others, in a nutshell, for my commitment to my own integrity and to a strong moral conscience and sensitivity to others’ feelings.

It followed from these thoughts that I began to feel angry as I pondered the individuals who had wronged me and caused me such suffering, those who have little integrity or have become deaf to the soft-spoken voice of their conscience. “How grossly unfair this world is,” I thought. Those individuals were clearly no worse off for their foul behavior, in fact, overall, they were better off than I was. What’s to keep anyone from becoming consumed with his or her own selfishness and indulging in lies and deceit, themselves, to manage better in this world??

The reality goes against everything I have ever heard in Christianity, where it is the good and moral who prosper and get rewarded, and, in the past when I would fall into this train of thought, I would take issue with God, who I perceived to be punishing “the good” and prospering “the bad” and just overall discouraging, even punishing everything good that can be expressed in human behavior.

This time, however, I turned to my angels and asked “What do you say to the one who has a strong conscience, a virtuous, empathetic and fair heart, living and relating with others from a basis of noble principles and integrity, but who finds him or herself constantly suffering or falling prey in life to others who are morally bankrupt, heartless, unscrupulous or without integrity? What do you say to the one who, no matter what is done to him (or her), he has not the heart to be as all others who wrong him, forsaking his integrity, love and principles in order to facilitate and ease life in this world?”

And my angels responded without hesitation:

That you do right by others and by your conscience does not mean you will prosper or gain favor with others. Therefore do right, not for gain or to be treated better, only do right because it is good and right, and make that your core and reason.

You are responsible for yourself and for your own actions, regardless of what others do, and you alone shall reap their consequences when the day comes. Do right by others and retain your clean conscience and peace of mind. Do right for right’s sake, not to gain favor or to avoid suffering. Only this is a commitment to what is good.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With Thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

January 9th, 2009

I talked to an angel. She was an angel of love above all else. Her love for us, for each and every one of us, was just like the love a mother feels for her new-born child as she holds it in her arms, so I called her Angel Mother.

One day, as usual, I was on the subway going into the city center. The diversity in the people that come onto the subway train never ceases to captivate me. Often I spend my time on the train observing people as they get off or come on the train, or as they sit talking, reading or listening to music, and this particular morning was not an exception. On this particular morning, a very large, very round young woman stepped onto the train. Despite her size and shape, she was wearing a denim mini-skirt. I had never seen someone so overweight wearing a mini-skirt before and I was a little surprised by the sight.

I, being mired and moored too much in this world, felt the precursor to some critical and unkind thoughts about this young woman start to well up inside me. However, because I wanted to change myself, a question came to me instead and I asked Angel Mother “But what do you think? Isn’t she fat? And isn’t it then also in particularly bad taste to wear a mini-skirt?”

Angel Mother’s response was instantaneous, firm and blunt: “I do not concern myself with her external appearance. I only care about her inner being.”

What Angel Mother expressed felt so beautiful as I experienced it, that tears came to my eyes as I sat on the train. I tried to wipe my tears away quickly and suppress my emotions so no one would notice; unfortunately my stop was next and I could not linger in the experience.

“Angel Mother loves everyone without prejudice and without discrimination,” I thought, ”she will be my mentor and my role model.”

The Luciferian Backslide

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Diary entry 11

(Diary entries are intended to be read in order)

The long and drawn-out process of detaching myself from Lucifer was like a dance of emotional to and fro – to him and from him. A waltz between bitter pain and anger, when I would use acidic words to try to make him feel guilty and fathom the egregious wrongs he had done me, and forgiving love, when I tried to draw him close to me, in forgetfulness of all wrongs, only remembering the sweetness of the love I once felt from him and for him. The length of a full cycle of these two waltz phases was initially anywhere from 1 week to a month.

By the time of this backslide to Lucifer, in October of 2009, one full waltz cycle would be completed roughly every six months, so I had made considerable progress. This time, the cycle was coming around again to the bitter anger phase, after roughly six months of no direct communication with him. This phase was almost instantly followed by a forgiving love phase, completing what would be the final full cycle of this agonizing dance of detachment.

A strange and shocking thing happened to instigate this cycle, which contained a particularly blissful forgiving love phase. I had done a reiki session on my relationship with Lucifer, because I felt I still had a lot of emotional anchors with him. I still felt quite disgusted by the male population in general as a result and I still recoiled at the mere suggestion of entering into another relationship.

Some days after that reiki session, on 14 October, 2009, I received an email from Lucifer which had an utterly devastating effect on me:

Hello Lucia. I miss you so much. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t know where you are or what you are doing… ? I would really like it if you told me everything about you, like you promised me one day. But I want to tell you something…that I have a little girl, her name is Serine Lucia. This way I will never forget you. And know that I love you and you will always be in my heart, despite everything.

That’s right. He named his first-born after me. I was so disgusted I became physically ill. Why?

Flashback to the Year 2005

The situation was this; I was geographically far away at a time during our relationship that we had had an enormous fight over the phone. That very same week, Lucifer allowed himself to be seduced by a decidedly promiscuous Algerian female (effectively dashing my misconception that Muslim females waited until marriage to have sex). Lucifer, being a tortured soul, immoral and (deservingly) unlucky, was the perfect target.

In moments of objectivity, I have looked at Lucifer, his life, his behavior and his choices and I have perceived how he almost seems to punish himself. It is as if he suffers from such guilt, that, subconsciously, he provides his own, deserved punishment. The situation he found himself in seems truly to be a bad miracle imposed upon him by his own subconscious guilt, for I can’t fathom even the existence of the kind of female he managed to attract into his life:

After seducing Lucifer, this female, “Lucifera,” went to the police and said that Lucifer had raped her. By doing so, according to Algerian law, Lucifera had forced Lucifer into a choice: he could go to prison, or he could marry Lucifera. (Yes, the punishment for rape in Algeria is marriage to the rape victim, or prison.)

The truth was that Lucifera had already engaged in sexual activity prior to meeting Lucifer and, furthermore, had recently been raped and accepted payment from her rapist not to go to the police. She then took advantage of the situation to indeed seduce Lucifer, as she suddenly found herself in the market for a husband. It became Lucifer’s word against hers, however, and Lucifer, as I said, was unlucky and a pathological liar, so, naturally, none of his family or friends believed him.

It would seem that, by her own reckoning, the fact that she was not a virgin would make it impossible for her to win a husband by means of any human virtue, such as Goodness, Honesty, Tenderness, Compassion or Love. Indeed, in her lack of those very virtues, she probably concluded correctly, that no man would marry her unless she tricked him into it by use of sex. Therefore, it appears, in retrospect, that she manipulated the immorality and weakness of some lowly male person, with the goal of setting him up for a false accusation of rape, in order to get a husband.

The Year 2009

It is within this historical context that these two “model citizens” had a baby and Lucifer named it after me. I don’t know if I was more nauseous or incensed. I was beside myself with sickness. Emotional sickness and physical sickness. Besides being chaste, I strive for goodness and all of the highest moral, spiritual virtues, not the least of which are Love, Truth and Compassion. The idea that Lucifer would mix me and the goodness I felt up in that twisted, sordid, perverse, demonic affair, and now its foul offspring, made me physically ill.

If I had been someone else, I might have laughed at Lucifera and her new daughter, because neither of them had the slightest clue that Lucifer had named the girl after his former love.

Instead, I was in tears of rage, as I went to my friend to cry and shout and swear about what Lucifer had done. This was the most unbelievable thing ever. I was blind with disgust and enraptured with the horror of having been made so intimately associated with what I felt to be such evil and treacherous workings. I truly might not have thought it possible, but, by my reckoning, Lucifer had incredulously succeeded in finding someone even more evil than himself.

After I told my friend and I cried and she advised me ad nauseum, I returned to my room to do reiki on myself. As I was reikiing myself on this issue, there was a great fury welling up inside me. Finally, it became so great, that I gave in to it – I, unwisely, stopped reikiing myself and, for the first time since I’d known him, I wrote the most furious, scathing, degrading email to Lucifer that I have ever written to anyone. I let everything out. I held nothing back. I wrote things I had thought or felt in the past, but never said in order to avoid hurting him. I left no word unsaid and I told him, under no uncertain terms, what I thought of that Satan baby that he gave my name to. I had a slight pang of conscience about that, but I told myself – “It may not be a Satan baby at birth, but, by God, it will be one soon enough, with Lucifer as father and with a mother even more diabolical than he, plus being surrounded, as it will be, by the whole Luciferian family.”

I felt so good after writing and sending that email! Usually I keep my anger bottled up inside me, because I can’t deal with hurting others, nor can I deal with their reactions. But ohhhhhhhh, it felt good! It was the first time ever that I did not care if Lucifer ever spoke to me again – and that is why I sent it. I didn’t care.

Soon enough, however, I began to realize that I will have to deal with his response, which was, simply “Thanks, Lucia. Thanks a lot.”

Guilt for what I had written began to consume me. The reason I keep my anger and hurt bottled up inside me, or that I express it in private, is specifically because I usually can’t live with myself after expressing my anger to someone. I do say the most horrible, acidic things when I let go of my anger. It shocks people, because I appear so mild. I was sure that I would go to hell just for the nature of the things I wrote in that email alone.

After I wrote the biting email to Lucifer, I continued to reiki the pain I felt from him. After two hours, I finally began to relax a little bit and my angry thoughts and feelings began to subside.

A Hard Reiki Lesson

One should never react to emotions and pain (or a healing crisis) that is kicked up during a reiki session, because one is bound to say or do things one will regret profusely; for once the reiki session is concluded and the negative emotions and pain have then been processed and released, after minutes, hours, or days, the emotions and pain you may react to while in the midst of a session will have subsided and will have left you with a feeling of tranquility. In this case, you will likely wish to turn back time or undo or unsay anything you did or said while in the midst of the session or its immediate aftermath. This is a lesson I still have not learned.

In the days that followed, I therefore had to do a lot of damage control. I reikied myself and my relationship with Lucifer every day. My intentions for each session included “Heal this relationship.” “Heal Lucifer and lead him to understand me, my pain and angry words, and to forgive me.”

The outstanding irony of everything I did reiki for, was that, although I had intended for Lucifer to become understanding and forgiving of me, I found that, in the course of the reiki, I was the one becoming understanding and forgiving of him. I literally felt the shifts taking place inside of me as I felt the energy going through me.

This result was far better for me than it would have been if he had been the one to become understanding and forgiving, as I had asked and wished. The reason for this is, it feels absolutely heavenly to feel what I proceeded to feel for the next month! Feeling forgiveness and understanding, indeed, feeling love, for someone else, as I did, puts you in a state of joyful ecstasy! Whereas, the person you feel forgiveness and understanding for is still stuck in their misery!

In fact, during one reiki session I did on the day after having received the email, I had a great new feeling open up in me, which I could not have even conceived would ever open up in me again since knowing Lucifer. During my reiki session, I felt: “I want to get married and experience sex and maybe even have a baby. I want my husband to be and work with me in my sanctuary in Algeria and share my vision. I can do better than Lucifer.”

In these 15 minutes of reiki, I felt myself moving away from Lucifer emotionally, for the first time ever, and realizing I can have love and my sanctuary.

After several days of reikiing myself, Lucifer and our relationship, I felt inspired to respond to his hurt-laden email. My response was of an unprecedented nature. I found, in my response, that I had automatically, or magically become what I had asked in my reiki sessions that he become – forgiving and understanding in new and unprecedented ways.

His response to me was then of a kinder and gentler nature. He was “ok” again and I was relieved and at peace again.

Discovering Abraham-Hicks

I continued to reiki our relationship, because I had happened upon a miracle; I had never experienced such joy in my whole life, and I had become the source of that joy. In truth, Lucifer was merely the vehicle for it, although I attributed it, at that time, all to the nature of our profound connection.

Something that enabled me to wallow in what I can only describe is an utterly heavenly bliss within a relationship, was a relationship exercise I had happened upon while watching a video clip on YouTube of Abraham-Hicks.

Abraham-Hicks include a woman named Esther Hicks and an other-worldly entity she channels which calls himself Abraham. Abraham, through Esther, is providing the world with a large body of information on how to manipulate the Law of Attraction consciously, for your benefit.

At this time, I had been watching many Abraham-Hicks video clips on YouTube, which had been drawn to my attention by someone I had as a friend on Facebook who posted an Abraham-Hicks video. I was “collecting” the videos that I liked most.

One of the videos I had seen at that time contained a wonderful relationship exercise, which I subsequently did concerning my relationship with Lucifer. The exercise advocated dwelling only upon the positive, in particular, the positive aspects and qualities of another person and making a list of those positive qualities and remembering only them, associating the person with only those positive qualities and forgetting every single bad one. Combined with my reikiing experience, the results were unfathomably blissful. Because Lucifer was actually as wonderfully good as he was bad, as much of an angel as a demon, he had an abundance of powerfully good qualities for me to dwell on. I literally became lost in his Goodness and his love for me, as I remembered it. I was experiencing such a perpetual and profound state of unprecedented love and joy within the frames of this relationship, really all due to changes I was making in myself, that I began to tell myself that I had really found the blissful love relationship I had always lived for.

Sitting out on the deck of my mother and step-father’s house, looking out at the backyard and basking in the beauty that is autumn. Autumn was never this beautiful to me. It’s warm, 60° F. The sun is shining on me, as I sit on the hard wooden bench.

The sun warms me. It has painted the leaves with vibrant yellows and heartwarming oranges and reds. Golden carpets under our feet as we walk along the sidewalk beneath bronze and golden canopies.

For me, autumn had always signified a time of death, darkness, silence and alienation. Autumn – a magnifying glass on my misery, my loneliness and despair. My worst autumn ever was the autumn of 2005, when I wrote Finnish Autumn. Today, I can barely remember the depths of despair I was in when I wrote that, which, even as bad as it was, and as bad as my life had already been to that point, was just the precursor to the worst that was yet to come.

But today, this year, autumn is beautiful. My favorite season and a natural complement to my hair .

I am a different person. I am happy. I have peace. I feel loved; and this is the first time, ever, in my life that I can say this.

I love autumn!!!

Yesterday, [I]the very same scenario[/I] occurred with my bf. A different trigger for me, but still he called me crazy and got angry at me. Everything was the same – [I]or was it[/I]? No, because I had healed myself and no longer had pain or emotional charge on being dismissed offhand .

I am so happy about this, I can’t even tell you how wonderful it feels to be able to have the power of the solution in your heart! . I feel so good!

Last week, I had a big fight with my boyfriend. Essentially, I had a reaction to something and he completely dismissed me by calling me crazy. I was upset already from the initial thing, but he has often called me crazy when he doesn’t understand me and it often sets me off. Meanwhile, he’ll call me crazy and then I start to get angry, ballistic angry, because then he disappears and stops talking to me for days and I’m left with so much upset and anger because he won’t speak or listen to me!

Last week when this happened, it was a big blow-up and I was questioning if I could salvage this and if I even wanted to. As I always do when I have bad feelings in my relationship with him, I reikied myself. As I reikied myself, I had the insight that I become “crazy” when he treats me like that, not because he is calling me crazy, but because he is dismissing and discounting me, judging me as crazy because he doesn’t understand me and doesn’t want to. He shuts off all communication.

As I continued to reiki myself, it dawned on me that this phenomenon hardly began with him. Indeed, this is a complaint I’ve had about all of my immediate and non-immediate family members ever since I’ve had a memory. It only began with family, but I have experienced it to lesser or greater degrees across the board throughout my whole life and it’s taken a horrible toll on my self-esteem and concept of self-worth. And here I found myself with someone, who is really fundamentally very good, moral and peace-loving, thinking he is the cause and blaming him for this recurring fight and wondering if I should even continue to stay with him.

This realization gave me the focus of my next reiki session. I spent the next 3-4 days without contact with my bf and doing reiki on myself for this upsetting issue of being dismissed, all the while not being sure if he and I would be together again. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that, if I didn’t heal this issue, it would recur in every romantic relationship I would attempt.

Then…

Yesterday, the very same scenario occurred with my bf. The thing that triggered my initial reaction was different, and my reaction too was different, but he still called me crazy and got angry at me. Everything was the same - or was it? No, because I had healed myself and no longer had pain or emotional charge on being dismissed offhand .

Soooo…when he called me crazy, I said “Just because you don’t understand me, doesn’t mean I’m crazy.” He continued to be angry at me, but not like last week, and I maintained myself the whole time. He was angry, but he was at least able to communicate with me, while last week he just shut me out and disappeared. Because he was able to communicate with me, I was able to answer him, explain my behavior to him a little. His anger at me didn’t bother me to such an extent that my reaction to it was controlling me.

Throughout the whole experience, I never once felt myself separated from my love for him by my own personal issues. Because of that, there was no fight and, in the end, I was able to get him smiling again and us speaking loving words to each other again. I was able to keep the peace between us, even though he got angry and called me crazy.

I am so happy about this, I can’t even tell you how wonderful it feels to be able to have the power of the solution in your heart! . I feel so good! I think that being able to stay with your love for someone as they are being poked and prodded by their own demons, and likely even to uplift them from the effects of their demons, in a relationship feels more wonderful and more rewarding than being in a relationship with someone who appeases the complaints of all of your own demons!

The most upsetting thing I am wondering, though, is how often is being told to dump someone actually the worst advice anyone could ever give you in a relationship??

Diary entry 10

(Diary entries are intended to be read in order)

After my experience with the “mother of all healing crises,” I was afraid to do reiki for a period of several months. I went on “reiki hiatus.”

I continued to see my psychologist, but without the aid of reiki. It felt as though the monumental shift that had taken place in me as a result of the last healing session had eradicated the source of my suicidal depression, and cleared me out enough emotionally that I could begin to intend some good things for myself without the interference of subconscious self-sabotage. All the same, I knew I had a lot more work to do on myself before I should pursue or accept a new love relationship. I was still profoundly attached to my previous love, Lucifer, even though the attachment no longer had any form in outward reality. I still felt spiritually and emotionally attached and committed to him to some extent, and couldn’t fathom how I could ever move on. Therefore, I deduced that nothing good could come of a relationship I entered or was coaxed into at that point.

I felt, however, that I was free of the bulk and most severe of my depression. This, indeed, was true, however, there was more left to heal than I had known. I furthermore realized that, all of these years, I had not been making a distinction between my depression and my anxiety; I had been experiencing them together all this time, but only thinking it was depression. However, it turns out that you can have depression and even suicidal thoughts without anxiety. I’m happy to report that at least my anxiety seemed to be, perhaps, 98% gone. As for my depression – let’s just say it was no longer a permanent state or my default response – let’s say it was 90-95% gone.

Yearning for something completely different

In my desire to escape myself and my life as I had known it, I had always known that a radical change would jolt me out of my prevailing state and possibly give me direction as well. I thought that what I really needed would be to spend some months in an Indian ashram meditating, doing yoga and learning about spiritual wisdom from yogis, so that I might rise above my emotional issues with wisdom and composure, grace and beauty, instead of the fits of shouting and tears I was prone to.

Well, I could not afford such an endeavor. Unexpectedly, I managed to happen onto the next best thing, right here in New York City. I had been looking on Craig’s List for months trying to find a yoga center where I could volunteer in exchange for yoga classes. That’s how I found a Naam yoga center in Manhattan. It was practically a yogic ashram in the middle of the city.

The center I found practiced Naam yoga, which has been explained to me more accurately as Kundalini yoga with the addition of Kabbalahic theoretical teachings and beliefs.

The benefits I derived from this yoga center, which comprise another major step in my healing and development, were in some of the different meditations.

In early summer, 2009, I had taken a Naam yoga class, in which the instructor provided a certain meditation; a certain mantra to chant and a certain mudra (hand position), which he said would increase our capacity to love and to heal others merely by our presence. His words appealed so much to me, that on that very same day, I went home and began that meditation.

I did that same meditation every day for more than 40 days. I noticed changes taking place in me as I was meditating. I could feel myself vibrating, as I did when I channeled reiki, after chanting the mantra.

As I continued the meditation day by day, I noticed myself going through a process, as if the meditation itself were setting my healing in motion, just as the reiki did, or clarifying my mind, bringing me wisdom or a greater connection with wise, spiritual sources, talking to me.

Sometimes thoughts of painful things would come up during the meditation and I would start crying—sometimes so much that I couldn’t speak to chant the mantra anymore.

After doing the meditation for an extended number of days, I began to get wonderful, wise thoughts and ideas in my head while meditating. Finally, I was getting so many, that I started a “meditation journal,” where I would write down my thoughts as I had them, because otherwise they would escape me, like smoke vanishing into the air.

Unconscious Love

While I was no longer an unconscious lover of someone else, as I had been of Lucifer (Who is Lucifer?), I was being “loved” unconsciously by several young men from afar, whose advances I had made many efforts to thwart.

But what is unconscious love? Without my inquiring, this is one of the many answers that came to me in my meditations:

Conscious Love Vs. Unconscious Love

August 29th, 2009

Conscious love is self-sacrificing,
Unconscious love is self-serving.

Conscious love respects its beloved’s will,
Unconscious love imposes its own will on its beloved.

Conscious love results in freedom,
Unconscious love results in bondage.

Conscious love is constant,
Unconscious love is erratic.

Conscious love seeks only the highest good for its beloved,
Unconscious love seeks its own immediate gratification.

Thus, strive only to love consciously, or not at all.

As someone who has been both a giver and a receiver of unconscious love, yet who has also experienced the giving of conscious love, I feel qualified to observe that unconscious love is what happens when we love someone sincerely and then pass that love through the dirty filter of our psychological, emotional problems and behavioral patterns. Suddenly, our love is not pure anymore, but becomes tainted with manipulation and selfish desires and requirements which are not of love.

I call this “unconscious love” for two reasons. Firstly, it must be called “love,” even though it may more often resemble or feel like hatred. Many-a-time, for example, I had wished Lucifer, who loved me, would have just killed me to put me out of my misery instead of continuing to love me. Occasionally I would ask him, how would he be worse to me if he hated me. It was clear in his response that he was a tortured soul.

The unconscious lover will swear up and down that he loves, indeed, when I examine myself, even now, in the times I have exercised unconscious love, I know I did love the man. I loved Lucifer, but we tortured each other.

Secondly, it must be called “unconscious,” for this is the element that makes this kind of love torturous, for both the lover and the beloved. “Unconscious,” because this love is implemented and expressed through us by means of our unconscious behavior, which has been formed by all of our past pain, beginning, but not ending with, that given to us by our parents.

The cure to unconscious love is to become conscious of and then to eliminate the causes of our programmed behaviors. This almost always necessarily involves emotional release, which is what I effectively achieve by using reiki.

This realization was important for me, because my entire life has been driven by the singular desire and yearning to find a true love with a man, which will prove impossible if I continue to love unconsciously.

Further, I have had the insight that, when you stop focusing on yourself in a love relationship, or in any circumstance really, when you let go of your self-concern, only then are you free to see the truth – be it favorable or not – and only then, if need be, can you offer the love your beloved may need.

Psychotherapy – a very slow, but helpful process

In therapy and healing, explanation and understanding for your feelings and behaviors are gradually unfolded to you, and week by week, not all at once. All my young life, I was 110% certain I was a “basket case” (as my father used to say) specifically as a result of a megalomaniacal, emotionally abusive and manipulative father. It is only to my surprise that I have been finding out through my reiki and my psychotherapy, that roughly 95% of my own dysfunction in love relationships has been passed to me from maternal neglect, and not paternal psychosis.

Diary entry 2

This time last year, I was in Algeria and I had suffered a profound mental and emotional breakdown. This time last year, I had unofficially quit my translation job of ten years. This time last year, I had a plan; I was going to kill myself and I had a plan to do it. Prior to this, I had done research on effective and sure ways to commit suicide, and I had pondered and begun to devise plans, but I had never had a plan as likely to succeed as this one, and I had never had the preparedness to execute such a plan. This time I did.

My plan necessarily involved travel. In one week, my visa to stay in Algeria would expire, so I had to leave. My plan necessitated that I be in a specific country (not Algeria) and that I store my luggage in the airport lockers of an airport in that specific country. It necessitated that I then travel to a specific area of that country to complete the execution of my plan, all on my own. On this day last year, I had this plan.

On March 26th last year, I was walking to the bus in Ain Turck, Algeria to go into the nearby city, Oran, to buy food. On my way, I fell on the sidewalk and broke my foot.

At 40 years old, I had never gotten any more than scrapes and bruises from falling down, and hadn’t broken a bone since I was six years old…until last March 26th, 2008. I would blame the miniature rock quarries that pass for sidewalks in Algeria, except for the fact that I was actually walking on a portion of sidewalk that was completely safe and in-tact. My shoes were a little big, and my feet were sliding around a lot in them, but still…

On this very day last year, March 27th, in meeting a certain Algerian…let’s call him “Lucifer”… I had fulfilled the reason I had gone to Algeria. In some parallel universe, Lucifer loved me; in this one, he lied to me, he cheated on me and he stole my heart, my mind and my money. I still loved him, because he had loved me and I had never had any feeling of being loved before and I was insanely desperate for it, so I just couldn’t let go of that love, or even the memory of it. I had to meet him one last time, just to see for myself how far away from his love for me he had come. He had come far.

One week after our meeting, I had to leave Algeria…with a broken foot, on crutches…with my luggage. My plan had to be postponed. I couldn’t even carry my own luggage, let alone carry out my plan. The Algerian doctor who had treated me had told me, however, that after two weeks with the cast, I should be able to have it taken off and to walk on my foot.

I left Algeria last year on Saturday, April 5th, the day my visa expired. I had nowhere to go. I had no domicile, I had no home. Prior to departing for Algeria on June 2nd, 2007, I had given up the apartment in Finland I had been living in for ten years and put all of my belongings into storage. I didn’t care what happened to me. You could say I had a death wish and, in a sense, I had become reckless.

So on April 5th I flew out of Oran, Algeria, headed for Paris. I spent two nights at the Charles de Gaulle airport. I had decided in the time at the Paris airport that I would fly to Helsinki, where I had to take care of some matters before dying, so I would also have a doctor take my cast off and then I would proceed with my plan. I was just biding my time at the Paris airport so that the prescribed two weeks would pass by the time the doctor in Finland was to look at my foot.

After two nights at the airport in Paris, I took a plane to Helsinki. I stayed two nights at the Helsinki airport too. On the second day, I went to a medical center, almost miraculously and thankfully located only some hundred meters from the airport itself. I had had the cast on for two weeks to the day.

The doctor and the nurse removed the heavy Algerian plaster cast and I became a little perplexed as to how I should be able to walk on my very painful and swollen, very purple and blue colored foot. The Finnish doctor informed me that I must have the cast on for two more weeks, a total of one month. Not only that, but he said I mustn’t fly. He put on a new cast and I was stuck in Finland with a cast, crutches, luggage, no help and nowhere to go but the freezing cold airport. I was forced to call for help.

I called one of the two friends I had made in Finland, knowing I had to impose myself upon her and knowing how the people in that country hate to be imposed upon, especially in their homes. I didn’t think I had any friends of whom I could ever ask such a great imposition. I was crying on the phone when I told my story. My friend said I could stay with her and her family for the two weeks until I got my cast off. Today this friend holds a unique place in my heart, even if our contact is sporadic.

I stayed two weeks with my friend and also managed to take care of the matter I needed to take care of before dying. What happened, however, during those two weeks…I continued to have email contact with Lucifer. Like I said, I still loved him and I still needed him. The mere shadows of his love were like a fading supply of oxygen. He indicated he was worried about me. I told him my plan. He was the only one. He was the only one I could talk to about what was in my heart, including suicide, because he had spoken to me of suicide, and, I believed, he had spoken to me from the depths of his heart.

In the end, I promised Lucifer that I would not kill myself. He had also made some promises to me which he said he would keep on the condition that I take care of myself, not kill myself, and keep him updated as to how I am and what I am doing. I don’t think either of us thought that he would ever keep any of his promises. The truth is, part of me was looking for a reason not to kill myself, part of me didn’t really want to kill myself, after all (suicide is not as easy as people think if you think about what you’re doing). Lucifer’s seemingly heartfelt caring, though likely feigned, and his, again seemingly, sincere request for follow-ups on me, plus promises on his part to become a better person, were all I needed to abandon my plan and make a new one. And that’s what I did.

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