“Few understand that horses are never truly domesticated. Their instincts are always there and readily take over once they are free. They stay or return to us by their choice, not the compulsion forced upon them.
Once realized you must also recognize only kindness will prevail to make a partner of an animal who’d prefer only the company of his kind and the freedom of wide open spaces. Any other relationship is based on the inadequacies of the tormentor on the tormented. One will lose. It’s always the horse, for even if he wins his defensive battle the mark of rogue will remain.
It’s been witnessed how a mustang will give up his life if his freedom can’t be regained when in the grip of adversity. There’s so much for us to learn from this, if we’d only learn to listen to their message.” ― Judith-Victoria Douglas
Several things have been bobbing around in my mind soup recently. Mind soup is the term I use to describe my conscious awareness and all the bits and pieces which enter it and then float around in it. Seemingly separate things which when observed more closely are sometimes connected. By making connections I occasionally have what I consider to be insights, whether they are by anyone else’s standards is irrelevant… they are relevant to me and my version of reality, life, myself.
I am aware that this is my perspective, and that it differs from others. I am always fascinated and intrigued by the views of others. My own views can be informed by being open to the views of others… as long as I remain aware, conscious, yet detached.
I received a comment yesterday on one of my more viewed posts from someone who announced that I was an idiot, did not know anything about what I was writing about, and they were the antidote to my stupidity. I stared at this comment and wondered whether they had thought things through. They were promoting themselves by demoting me… and expecting me to promote them and their demotion of me. They added a link to their blog, pretty much saying – the blog and the author of this blog on which I am choosing to promote my own blog and myself is an idiot (who is going to be dumb enough to approve my comment and promote me on their stupid blog and even dumber post).
There was a spark of rant which lit up in me, and then went out. I sighed and thought – let it go, another wounded soul is so deeply caught up in their wound that they are unable to see how their fight to survive their own pain hurts others. They are passing on the wound, thinking that they are healing it. Maybe their wound is healed in the passing on. Who knows.
I’ve done that. Been so caught up in my own pain that I didn’t realise how it hurt others. Until I realised it. That awareness provoked a change. Change takes time.
So when I saw this week’s Photo Challenge: Monument… at first I thought of it within the box. Then it slowly filled the box and bled out of it, overflowing.
What is a monument? What does it signify? Not so much to those who built it, but to those who see it many years, sometimes decades, sometimes centuries, later.
We sometimes build monuments to our wounds as a way of acknowledging them, especially if they have been denied, by us, by others, by society and the world.
Even if others acknowledge them… is it ever enough to make up for what we have suffered for so long, perhaps in silence, perhaps aided and abetted by others whom we believe could not or would not see. And in building a monument to our wound, our suffering, our deep pain, we hope to heal our wounds in doing so by making them solid and visible to one and all. We place plaques with these monuments, telling our story to remind ourselves of what we may forget, because survival often entails forgetting what has happened and focusing on what will happen next. To inform others. To pass on a story through time. Don’t let this happen again… but history or herstory must sometimes repeat itself, because a personal experience is best understood when it is personal to all, not just to one or a few, or even to many, and even then… it takes time for us to accept certain truths. Change takes time.
There are monuments which are not considered as such. Logos in some ways could fall into that category.
Why do certain logos catch on and others don’t? What is it about an image, a design, a form which makes us want to invest in it, be it with money, with thought, with feeling, and whatever else we have to invest?
The local village close to where I live was burned to the ground after a rebellion centuries ago. Only a few structures remain of that time. I was going to capture one of these and share it for this challenge, but something else caught my eye while I was on my quest. A wild horse. The Mustang. An emblem which in some ways is a monument.
A monument to the human spirit, to the secret, savage and wild within us all. Our nature is in nature, but as we become more civilised so we disconnect from our nature and become what we nurture. Something separate, other, apart rather than a part of.
Once upon a time humans tamed wild horses. Made them domesticated, used them for transport and other things. Then things changed. We invented a different kind of horse to carry us forward, but we paid homage to those beautiful wild creatures who allowed us to tame them and use them, and sometimes abuse the power they allowed us to have over them.
Mustangs often appear in films and TV as the transport of those who are mavericks, outsiders, rebels with a cause, who think for themselves, who feel deeply what others have chosen to ignore because… civilisation needs us to forget our secret, savage wild side. But it is still there…
“The most important thing a person could learn from being around horses is how to control the expression of their emotions, even the non-verbal ones, and lose all unnatural fears. Fear only binds what should be free. That applies in all areas of thought, belief and actions. If you can’t overcome it, then resist it. Be courageous.” ― Judith-Victoria Douglas
An Upturned Soul 
I am glad that you chose not to react to the person who made the comment. You have one of the best blogs on WordPress. 🙂
I loved how you segued into a discussion of monuments and logos. Well done! 🙂
LikeLike
It was a weird comment as it wasn’t really directed at me. I was dismissed in the first sentence and the rest of it was a bit soap box talk, self promotion, addressed to those who might read my post with a link to their writing at the end of it. It was on one of my NPD posts, the one about being a child of narcissists, it seems to be the one which annoys certain types of people the most and occasionally I get a – you don’t know what you’re talking about – comment on it. Which is ironic as that’s one of the things a child of narcissists grows up with, being constantly told that your version of reality is wrong and then having to listen to what the right version of reality is. It’s like a reality competition with people not wanting to admit that all versions are viable and no one is right or wrong.
One of the things I like about WordPress is that you, the blogger, can decide whether to let a comment through or not, it means you really have to consider your own part in things. You pause and assess. Really listen to the words in the comment and to the words which it inspires within. It can prompt self-insight.
Btw, you inspired the photo. I read your wonderful irrational loves post and spotted that you loved Mustangs, so when I saw the logo it captured my attention, your love inspired mine. You were my creative muse. 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you! I don’t think that I’ve ever been a muse before! Glad I could help! 🙂
LikeLike
I’m sure you’ve been a muse to many, perhaps they just haven’t shared that info with you 🙂
Thank you!
LikeLike
In another context – a declaration of one idiocy as perceived by some other can be expressed in all sorts of creative ways.
The car driver version of that post is a “close pass”, and when I talk about cars I do so from the perspective of a cyclist. Most car drivers are fine, in the sense that they do their thing and I do mine they are affectively invisible, but there are exceptions.
Now and again – once or twice every single time I get on my bike, which is actually almost every day, so a few times every day some car driver like your commenter will somehow think that driving past like I am not there will, well I am not sure what they think, so anything I would write about that would be pure speculation, but it has the feeling of being hateful, expressive of a desire for control and a bit sad if that is in fact what gets them off.
In London you will more often that not have the chance some yards later when they are stopped to discuss this behaviour with them, often this is aggravating but in my time I have tried all sorts of coping strategies, ranging form violently confrontational physical events to laughing to ignoring.
During the period of ignoring what I managed to nurture within myself was not peacefulness at all but symptoms consistent with PTSD much time was spent in the throws of involuntary revisualisations of these events, repeating over and over and over often with escalating instances of violence on my part. I am guessing as a wish for some retribution or as an expression of my feeling of powerlessness.
To combat this after years of witnessing the remains of disintegrated wing mirrors flying through London streetscapes noting also that this to in fact be quite demonstrably wrong instead now I rather prefer to take a photo – have a little shout – but take a photo and then write about it maybe also writing to an identifiable superior of the aggressor but writing has become a grounding experience, one I think we share here in all sorts of aggravating contexts, the aftermath and consequential other dimensionality of loser narcissistic victimhood for example. Writing acts as a purging sort of vomiting cleanse of the knotty impasses such losers inject into our lives.
Maybe as a newbie victim of a loser narcissist abuser I am seeing parallels of that model of behaviour everywhere at varying scales and with various disguises but to my mind the best way to expunge it from any system is here sitting forming meaning with words – something of the process of assembling meaning works I think also subconsciously inside us – affectively ameliorating maybe reordering our foundational subconsciousness places – however that works – it feels better a little more every day.
So maybe we should thank those posters those car drivers for gifting us a foil through which we are able to express things otherwise hard to form meaning around in isolation.
LikeLike
The narcissism of humans is in everything we say and do and feel and think, etc, it’s a natural element of being human, it has a healthy side, it tips into a disorder, into the unhealthy, when that’s all a human is about. Sometimes knowing the difference can be like looking at an optical illusion and trying to figure out what is actually there.
Giving expression to our experiences helps us to understand them, the important part is understanding. Sometimes the experience becomes more important than understanding it, and that’s when it solidifies into a monument of sorts.
I love the way you deal with being a cyclist in London and blog about it. It’s personal power in action and expression.
Thank you for sharing 🙂
LikeLike
Interesting as I started that blog having seen that I was suffering from a sort of PTSD…
Repeated violent revisualisations of events between me and cars that would run round and round my head like excited children – and as often happens they fall and start screaming don’t they – PTSD is like that…
Little did I know then that I would have a whole new source for these rampant thoughts, the making crazy of a loser narcissist is strong yet ethereally indistinct magic, it defies description and renders you mute.
Words and the choosing of them – the flow that happens among them and the sense of expulsion you sense as you let them out is an interesting but deeply therapeutic mix in both ameliorating the car drivers and the loser narcissist’s maelstrom of discord.
I fight back against my pet narc’ – take those things he tried to control back for my own use once more – each time a silent victory each a little step in the right direction further away from his contemptuous bile. He already exposes himself a little to the general audience unwinding a little – my disinterest in him grows stronger each day… I will be ok.
It is nice to find us discussing ideas once again – I missed you a little.
🙂
LikeLike
Healing from that kind of an experience takes time, because it often stirs up wounds which we had forgotten we had. Sometimes what seems like a new experience holds echoes of old ones. It ripples back in time and deep within, raising that which is unresolved. Learning to make positive use of the negative is a creative and definitely therapeutic way to go. It takes time, patience, and gentleness with ourselves. We need to feel what we need to feel, express it, and see where it all leads. The journey is the reward in and of itself, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like a reward at all 🙂
As you grow, so all those and that which seemed to loom over you, will shrink until they become their actual size and you do too. As perspective changes, everything changes with it.
I saw an intriguing Indie film last night – Charlie Casanova – it’s a brilliant portrayal of a sociopath, which does not glamourise it, and shows it for what it is. You might find it interesting re: your narc and those in his thrall.
It’s always a pleasure sharing ideas with you 🙂
LikeLike
I made such a stupid mistake – re-connected with my lost friends on the forum the pet narc’ made to exclude me from them – I exploited a fairly normal conversation and his sidekicks denial of my deliberate exclusion to have them then have to add me on the basis that to exclude me would reveal the deception.
Pet narc’ was not looking – initially he made a disorganised appeal to the local peers to discredit me but this actually made them add me – then it was only 2 days later and I am now banned again and they – the loser narcissist and his sidekicks – are out posting stuff of mine from a psychopathic abuse support site all over the place to make me look crazy.
They really do follow like a narcissists cook book don’t they – I was upset at midnight when this happened – failed to sleep well – but I find that I am actually ok now – like its all expected, I’m a lot less upset that I would have been only weeks ago.
I was so silly to think I could reconnect with my flying colleagues in that place, feels like I was hoovered. I feel like an idiot.
LikeLike
Hi there Silkred,
just a few words to tell you you are not an idiot, you were just trying to connect with your lost friends, it’s normal to feel you’d like to have back them into your life;unluckily when Ns are involved everything turns out to be weird and violent..you are not the one to blame!
LikeLike
Thank you seashell – its so difficult at times dealing with this in the moment… comment like this really does help. Thank you.
LikeLike
I’m with Seashell 🙂 Please try not to feel like an idiot. You are not. You tried to reconnect with lost friends? There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s never wrong to care about someone. Narcissists are little vortexes of angst. They stir things up. And embarrassment seems to be a side-effect of interacting with them, but it’s best to be kind and compassionate to ourselves. Speak to yourself about yourself with care and respect.
Part of the challenge of moving on after a narcissist is to determine if mutual friends are truly our friends. Some are; some are not. It takes time and patience to figure that part out. And a little distance. Go easy on yourself. Everything you’re feeling and doing is natural.
LikeLike
@Hope – It is a challenge and I think the notion of a thing or of a behaviour being either good bad right or wrong is something that comes from inside us – I felt happy a lot to feel the connection to the others for the little time it was there
the anger of the narcissist has spilled over, his anger overtaken him – and me – we are all now banned from another place, a national forum where the personal connections are distant more than within our local club
one of his loyal sidekicks spread his attack too far, wishing within their sphere of hate to belittle me in front of a wider audience, they lacked perspective – it is visible now to everyone – a monument for everyone to look at in incredulity – such incredulity that those with a critical view suspended me and all of them while they take time and think about what they have seen
strangely I feel a degree of peace that this abuse so ethereally executed by the narc’ had become writ large among all the significant others within our sport…
I hold only little hope that the underlying form of this monument if you will is seen and understood – I feel that his power as a twister of the truth will save him from censure but this day feels different a little as a result…
Hope you form your words with a poetic heart.
LikeLike
Ditto what seashell and Hope said, they know of what they speak from deeply personal experience, which is why they are spot on, wise, caring, and inspiring when they share their hard-won wisdom. 🙂
Mistakes are experiential experiments, they are neither right nor wrong, neither clever nor stupid. If we don’t try things out, how will we ever know things for ourselves, feel and think for ourselves, have our own personal point of reference, live our own life and throw ourselves into the adventures which it has for us. Don’t worry about making mistakes, worry about not making them. Did you learn something from this ‘stupid’ mistake? If yes (which definitely seems to be the case), then it isn’t stupid at all, it’s actually smart!
Being sore goes hand-in-hand with soaring. Rebuild your wings, make them stronger, and let yourself soar again.
LikeLike
Its strange in a way but my mind is its quietest for some time – I feel a good degree of peace which I am accepting and not exploring the counter intuitivity of the presence of such inside me I accept its wisdom
as you do so well Ursula I am feeling myself freely and enjoying to observe the pure truth of me in this moment
‘seashell’ as a word has a beautiful significance to me and the word ‘hope’ encapsulates so much of how I feel – there is a poetic narrative to how events connections and feelings are weaving themselves around and inside me in these moments
I make a break from the normal this weekend too – travel to other places – visit my mother – fly in the mountains – I will soar…
something has happened here – can you feel it….
LikeLike
Thank you Silkred.
I think you deserve a bit of rest and life far away from what is hunting you. People sometimes behave themselves in the most ambiguous and twisted ways, but they don’t doubt about themselves, while we always end up with a question on our plate even when it not necessary.Everything is nourished by the mind, it’s very hard at times to struggle to keep things at bay. Don’t be your enemy and appreciate your way of being human, the fact you care for people, even if they might not reciprocate-their own business. Do appreciate your own company as you are a good hearted person. it took me a very long time and i am not always very talented at loving myself, but I invest a lot of my energy there, it’s like building up a house on solid foundations.
LikeLike
Thank you, silkred.
Something has happened here. I can feel it too. I think we are all healing each other. It’s the power of being understood.
Go soar this weekend.
LikeLike
Have a lovely weekend 😀
The mind tends to go quiet once it knows we’ve heard what it wanted us to know, and that we’ve understood it, and expressing yourself is one way to do that.
Take care of yourself!
LikeLike
Your blog is such a deep place of thought and subtle considerations on life, people and perceptions that is not accessible to everybody- plenty of people are shallow and get envious of what they can’t understand and experience. Take it as a powerful compliment from whom can’t express them otherwise! On the other hand, it would be handy to have a device such as a instant fire on their pc when they start bugging your blog, but techology hasn’t got the faculty of discerning morons. i love what you do and i do read you everyday with interest and care as it makes me grow.
LikeLike
Thank you 🙂
Much of life, especially in relationships, we navigate the weird waters of self and other. Other always thinking that they have to compete with our self, and their attitude sometimes makes us think we have to compete with them too… but we don’t. We’re all equal, some just have a hard time with that because that’s not what they grew up with or what they’ve been told to believe, etc 🙂
LikeLike
It’s baffling to hear about some blogger calling you an idiot, but promoting their own blog. Obviously there is some arrogance overriding their confidence, and this person sees you as competition. Aside, is there really a competition on here? We’re a group of writers who began our blogs for the same reasons: to write, to entertain, to exercise our free speech, to express ourselves creatively with our own voices.
We don’t know each other, but there is the confidence that we can come to each other with a concern and express ourselves constructively.
However, I don’t know much. I am also an idiot.
🙂
LikeLike
I think you’re right about there being an element of competition to it, which is baffling because my blog is tiny, but some people see competition everywhere even where it doesn’t exist.
I love your approach and I think in the blog world the overall feeling and attitude is one of a supportive community, which is lovely and inspiring, and mutually encouraging.
One of my favourite books is The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. No one is an idiot and everyone is, it all comes down to perspective, which is very changeable, more so than the weather.
🙂
LikeLike
A monument to my wound? What a fascinating thought. It has me thinking and thinking. And it’s worrisome to me. Monuments are typically large, solid powerful things. We stare at them, and our minds drift while we think about their meaning. Monuments are thought provoking, but they can distract us from what’s going on around us. They take up our vision. A wound? A wound needs to stay translucent and permeable, so that we can affect it, change it.
And monuments are often worshipped, aren’t they? I’ve started to wonder. Do we, in some perhaps unconscious way, begin to worship our wound? Do we become enamored of it? We study it. We analyze it. We dissect it, but putting something under a microscope does not change what it is. And we howl at the moon at the unfairness and injustice of the wound, but life is unfair and unjust.
At some point, the wound starts defining us. We paint our wound into a self-portrait. Our wound starts becoming our story. It becomes equal to our story. But our lives are bigger than the people we meet along the way who are incapable of loving us. Our lives are so much bigger than who does or does not love us. We are so much bigger than our wounds.
I don’t want monuments to the wounds the three caused, because I would be creating monuments to the three, themselves. Something about that feels wrong to me. My story should be about me, about my successes, my challenges, my journey through my own, unique life. Not about the three, who were only wounded themselves at some point in their past. There should be only one monument in my life, and that’s me. I am my own work of art.
The more time passes, the more it seems a simple story, when we get to the heart of it. By simple, I mean clear, although not easy. A wounded person entered our lives, someone incapable of loving. Not everyone can love. So we let those who cannot, go. We let them go. We do not need something from them that they cannot give. That’s it.
Does that heal our wound in the way we might want? I’m not sure it does. A painful memory is a painful memory. If we are true and honest with ourselves, that loss will be with us. Healing does not mean we discard the loss into the oblivion of the back of our minds. Loss is important, but healing means that the loss is just one experience in a rich, tapestry of life experience—and the loss no longer gets in the way of life, the living of it, in the now. In the end, it was just a person. And it was just an experience.
At some point, we need to end the story around the wound, write the last page and close the book. Life is not on hold while we hurt. The planet still turns; the days still pass. We let go and decide to live, clear and away from it. We turn our eyes to the living of life, and resist the urge to turn our wounds into monuments.
These are my musings on this day. 🙂
LikeLike
@Hope – these words you place here are truly beautiful – they speak to a truth – brought peace into my day – I thank you….
LikeLike
I do love it when you share your musings 🙂 What a wonderful mind, deep ocean of emotion, strong heart and a beautiful soul!
I think we do sometimes build monuments to our wounds, sometimes it is necessary, sometimes it is our way of knowing there is a wound which needs healing, and time and effort needs to be taken to do so, and monuments can be toppled, replaced with something else, or they become something else over time, a garden to retreat to, a place to think, a quiet contemplation, the last green place in a grey city.
Like you said, you are your own work of art, you can change your landscape when you are ready, make it whatever it needs to be for you as you change, evolve, see yourself, others, and life differently. Our story changes as we do, and our story helps us to change or to un-change from who we thought we should be into who we truly are.
You are a natural philosopher! What a great talent to have!! 🙂
LikeLike
Ursula, thank you for all your kind words throughout these recent months. And for giving me a place to share my pain, my healing…my pain, my healing. It’s not a linear journey, is it? It’s more like a Jackson Pollock painting 🙂
Your blog is a healing place. And that’s largely due to the wisdom and curiosity and kindness that you model for the rest of us. I am grateful I stumbled upon your little home in cyberspace.
LikeLike
That lovely, thank you very much 🙂 I am also grateful to you for finding me!
I love the comparison between healing pain and painting. In many ways what you have shared is painting with words, creating a portrait and yet so much more than that, a tableau vivant (and artform I absolutely adore).
I think the only thing in life which is linear is our concept of time, there are lines in many things but their path is not always straight and forward, most things have freedom of shape and movement. The process of healing is intricate in design, layered, and connected to every other part of us, as is the pain even though we may think it is just in the wound, it travels through us, rippling through nerves touching us from our head to our toes and fingers.
One of the things I noticed when I began blogging about my own pain, was that the expression of it, even when I tried to cloak it, had a certain real and natural magic to it. It’s more than just a catharsis and getting your story out into the open to let light in on what has been in shadow, it’s more than letting go through words of what has been held too tightly and too close, it’s seeing, listening, hearing and understanding yourself in a way that feels like the self touching the self, saying hello and welcome home.
Thank you so much for sharing, when we touch our self, we also touch the self in others 🙂
LikeLike