Waves of rage.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you for letting me go. I hate you for holding on so tightly to me. I am angry at you and I am angry at me.

How many of you have been feeling angry toward someone you love? How many of you have been aware on how similar feelings of love are to those of anger and restriction? I remember when I first heard about development psychology and the process from conception through times of childhood. There is a theory that talks about the baby, when it starts the individuation process recognising itself as an own being, separated from others. At that stage and a little later, starts the phase of holding on to objects and letting them go right after (“hold on/reject/hold on/reject” mood), symbolising the psychological process on how to navigate the joy of the presence and the frustration and pain of the absence of the mother (or the principal caretaker of the child at that time).

I don’t support only one point of view. In spirituality, we hear a lot to talk about “we are all one”, “we are not separated from the other”, “being separated is an illusion”, etc. There was a time in which I felt deeply confused, as if theories of psychology couldn’t live next to those of spirituality. I felt a deep inner conflict rising within me and only a few months ago, did I start to let go, and to see and accept my humanity, my own individuation process.

In one hand, I felt and I feel deeply blessed to know what the sense of oneness is. But I can tell you, that having suffered from deep dissociations stages; most of my life I’ve lived through non-identification. And, it didn’t feel good to me. I was empty inside. Very empty. But more so ungrounded, and confused, floating in between my body and consciousness. That oneness, didn’t last either, and today I am convinced, that it is because I was never able to really deeply experience my human nature first. My identification first in a safe way; That natural psychological process you need to go through so that you can go beyond after. You can call it transcendence.

Now that I am much more grounded, meaning that I finally accept to feel human, I can feel more spiritual too. The less human I feel, the less spiritual I become. And anger was and plays a big role in it. I strongly believe, that we need both sides of the spectrum. That’s why we are what we are. Not only and entirely human, but also not only and entirely spiritual. Remember when I talked about life as a paradox and complementary at the same time? It was in my first article about silence and quietness. This is an example of it. We are human because we have the spiritual side, and we are spiritual because we have the human part. Both of them exist within the other. Without that, there is nothing that can name what we are, nor if we are no matter how much scientifically or spiritually we try to do so. It will always remain an illusionary try to explain the inexplicable.

Back to the anger that showed up this week, I remembered feeling relieved when I first heard about that “holding/rejecting” phase. It is a stage filled with a lot of frustration and hatred mixed with love and attachment. It is one of the most important stages of your life. It is one of the most fundamental phases to accompany a child through. As someone searching for its identity, its human incarnation to be more sensitised, I remember feeling a sense of meaning, big big meaning in my mind and in the embodiment of my-self. I remember noticing that, and yet how fearful it felt to accept that I was human and finite. I was so angry at my parents, my brother, and people around me, at God and life trying to find a responsible for all of my pain. At a very young age, I was confronted with such strong sensations of non-safety that I could never really believe that being alive was something good.

That’s why “transitional” phases, like separations and changes, became one of the most painful experiences of my life, it almost felt like death to me. Back then, I didn’t have parents that understood my sensitivity, not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t know better. They showed me what they’ve been shown to. The individuation phase for me is really a big issue. Questioning who I am, what I’m here for, where I fit in and how to explain it, kind of overwhelmed me but more so because I felt alone asking about that while others didn’t.

I gave birth to a silent anger residing within me, an anger a rage, against myself and life. Guess what, the silence broke into outbursts, that, no one understood. Why am I the way I am? Complicated? Too little or too much? Thinking too much? Feeling too much? Or not enough? Never quite good enough. Today I can adjust those thoughts by saying: How is it that deep down, I feel totally okay with the way I am? It is actually more about what others interpreted that started to collapse my foundation?

It is as if that anger, these rage outbursts I went through, come from a place of in between the “hold on and release” process. It is as if something in between wasn’t fundamentally rooted. The integration process failed. I am not in a place yet where I can explain it any better or more precisely, because it’s something so organic and vivid that the understanding and processing of the brain, becomes irrelevant. Sometimes, there are things we cannot explain because they did happen in a time where we didn’t think yet, where we didn’t process information intellectually, where we didn’t speak. We had a language, but a language that in the process of becoming adult remains forgotten, the language of the unspoken. That exact non-integration still fills me with anger sometimes.

Interesting enough, here comes the big paradox. I find myself being angry at me, to be able to love that much at the same time, no matter what happens and sometimes no matter what people do. But within spirituality, I also came to the knowing that that type of love, is a love that is called "ego based love", within the hate as its biggest mirror contrast. So I thought I hated myself for loving so much and also for being able to let go of these people even if I loved them.

It is as if memories are still being asked to be processed about seeing how much my parents or other people could have loved me in a way, and me really feeling that, and on the other hand asking myself “how were they able to be still so selfish and self-absorbed”? This is the core of what is called "co-dependency". I will write an article about that. It is one of the deepest truth I needed to face with myself. Being totally co-dependent, within the other, losing my entire sense of self.

In that co-dependency I've been searching for meaning in how is it that I cannot be the only thing they need to be around with? How is it that they say I mean everything to them, that I adapt myself and do whatever they want me to do and they are still concerned about themselves. Is this real love I started to ask myself? Or am I just living in a constructed illusion in order to survive?

That’s the thing with relationships I’ve been with in my life. Stuck in between holding on/rejecting/holding on/rejecting/holding on, and on and on. I am discovering the painful truth of my unfulfilled sense of self, my lack of identity, feeling nothing without the other, and existing only through the eyes of others. I wonder now, what would happen if I’d be able to give that sense of self, that deep existential recognition to myself today?

Now I know that I needed to go through this in order to see clearly. Today I can't thank the universe enough for each and everyone of these experiences. Without them, I wouldn't be able to break free, without them, I wouldn't be able to see what I see today. Me recognising myself into the gateway to my own soul.

It was never about them. If was never about anyone but myself.

I hate you. I hate me. For loving you, and forgetting about me. I hate me and I hate you, for putting myself first and forgetting about you. I hate you. And I hate me, for loving you without loving me. How can I love me and you at the same time? How can you love me and yourself at the same time? How can you love me, without searching for pain? How can I find that love, without destructive vain?

I hate you and I love you as much as I hate and love me.

Thank you for this gift.

Thank you for reading me.