Tales for the journey : The Door ( Acceptance)

The door

The wall before me was covered in thick ivy that had grown over the years.  The ivy was strong and the leaves very green.  Yet there was just a hint in the shape of the green covering that suggested there might be something behind it.  Bit by bit, I tore off the resisting stems until the red, crumbling bricks of the wall were revealed.  I searched for many years, tearing away the ivy which, neglected, soon grew again.  Then one day I noticed that there was wood beneath the ivy, and as I carefully took off the leaves and stems I saw that this was a wooden structure and it was the shape of a door.

I examined the door, noticing the strong wood panels, the square strong frame, the veins of the deep oak wood.  There was no doorknob, no keyhole and no key.  The door stood in the wall, mute and mysterious.  Why was it there?  What was on the other side?  Would I ever be able to open it?

I asked a friend to help me.  Together we cleared away the remainder of the ivy, and I explored with my fingernails the crack around the door.  I put my ear close, so close to the wood and listened as hard as I could.  I thought I could hear something but it was only the beating of my own heart.  Together my friend and I debated why the door was there, what may be on the other side.  I sat there for many days staring at the door, dreaming of the day when I might know how to open it and know what was there on the other side.

In my dream a man stood in the open doorway.  How was it that the door had opened?  Beyond the tall figure of the man there was a strange landscape that I thought I knew, but I woke up and the dream faded from my memory, leaving only a sense of loss and isolation.

I grew angry at the mute and silent square shape of the door and I threw myself against it and beat upon it with my fists.  I knew that if I could only open the door then I would know what was on the other side.  I could not go on with my life until I saw that strange landscape that my heart already knew about but my mind could not encompass.  I was obsessed. 

A healing path (5) no worst: not feeling allowed to exist

The worst part of the Black Hole is the way you represent in your mind the fact that your twin ceased to exist.   This is an extract from an article about the so-called "Pre-oedipal psychopathology." (In other words, being a womb twin survivor, but then these people don't know about us) 

Persons suffering from pre-oedipal psychopathology generally are able to function quite well in their work life and in interpersonal relations which are not too intimate, and yet they are prey to attacks of intense oral rage which is directed against others or themselves. Their object relationships vacillate between superficiality and clinging dependency and manipulative demandingness. They have little tolerance for stress and are hypersensitive to criticism. They exhibit an outward calm, while inwardly feeling chaotic and inferior, especially with respect to persons in authority. They tend to suffer from any combination of two or more neurotic, seemingly psychotic, psychosomatic or socio-pathic symptoms and they tend to complain of diffuse free-floating anxiety, of a pervasive sense of emptiness and of existential despair or of a vague feeling that things are not as they should be with them.

 The idea of "existential despair"  is of interest here.  This is not being dead, or a fear of death, or even a fear of being alive.  This is a feeling of not being allowed to exist.