shrinking may occur

i see themes run thru stuff in my life a lotta times.
i don't see them right away.
but when i start looking at something, i realize it looks like
something else going on, which looks a lot like this thing over here...
and pretty soon i realize there's a theme!

i'm in the middle of watching a theme right now.

it's the theme of shrinking worlds.
and it has me intrigued.

i am more grateful than i can express that i just came out of a rough
time with my guy feeling deeper love than ever.

it was a complicated rough time.
really complicated.
that had been forming for awhile.

and it took a final kinda blast to knock us flat where we were just
forced to really look at what was goin' on and to either reach out
and learn, or lose what we had.

i honestly believe because of all the work we've done in the past,
we were up for the task. but it wasn't easy by any means.

we were both feeling pretty darn threatened.
and i'm not sure i woulda thought of that threatened part and worded
it that way if it weren't for watching someone else.

the someone else had gotten so deeply scarred that they've never been okay since
the scarring. i knew that and had slowly watched what had already seemed
a small life start to shrink. but now, i saw it shrinking even more so.
and i was amazed.

what causes that? i wondered.
how could it get even smaller?
what's making that happen?

in talking this over with that guy of mine, he pointed out that being
threatened will cause that.

i realized that he was right, there were more threats goin' on for this
person who was shrinking before my eyes, and it made total sense.

i immediately flashed back to my previous week.
i was threatened.
that'd be a good thing to look at.....

i had worked as hard as i could not to let my world shrink.
i didn't think of it in that way. didn't realize that's what i was doing.
but in looking back, i could see it clearly.
and i wasn't always so good at it.
fear can close a world pretty darn fast.

i thought of my elderly neighbor who's world was shrinking.
i thought it was shrinking from being self absorbed. and i thought that was the
culprit. but i think it's a combination of stuff. and being threatened
has got to be in there.

and then i got yet another example from yet another person around me.
in watching their absolute resistance in letting go of the past, i see their
world shrink. 'it must be a living hell' i thought. and i realized they had
been so deeply threatened and had never ever recovered from that.

how is it you don't recover from that?
what choices do you make to keep yourself in a world that shrinks all
around you?
what makes the shrinking happen more and more?

and what gets you out of it?

i thought of my week. my recent hanging out with being threatened.

i know i'm lucky enough to have a partner who works with me and
wants to work with me, and i know we have real love. so i also know
that means, my little example from the past week isn't going to have
all the answers. it's too easy. not threatening enough.

but it didn't feel easy, felt threatening enough.
and i'm thinking there's got to be some of the pieces in there.
and so i look -

i know both of us tried real real real real hard to look beyond ourselves.
i know that's part of the piece.

we both messed that up a lot, but the intent was there, and the trying
again and again was there.

i know i kept thinking things like 'what can i get out of this? how do
i learn to love myself and someone else thru this?'

i guess there were bigger goals than just surviving.
there was the goal of growing.

while love would hide and get confusing, it was always part of the process.

so i think all of that matters.

but then when i try to flip all that onto a really awful happening in life....
a really powerfully threatening thing in life........i wonder how on earth
you really can do that kinda thing? how do you try to look beyond yourself
and to concentrate on growing?

isn't it totally hunker down and survive?

yeah, i think it's gotta be.
i think that's okay.
it's gotta be.

but i think there's a time limit on it.
one that varies, i'm sure.
but there's always an expiration date on that.

.......i think a time comes when you gotta stop hunkering
down.......and you gotta find a way to lift your head to the sun
and try to grow.

or else your world shrinks.
and you shrink.

and at the end, what's left?

i'm watching people who've passed the expiration date of surviving
and have settled in to that as a way of life. and i'm wondering if that's
the way they'll go til the end.

and i want to learn from this.
i want to learn from what i just went thru with my guy.
i saw what fear did.
i saw what love did.

and it truly boggles my mind.