the jitters

I sit outside writing in a journal anything that comes to mind.   In the corner of the wooden deck, dried leaves caught in a spider web jitter in the wind.  The twitching motion brings to mind what seems completely random,  the movie” The Hours”. 

In particular,  the boy - or  son of the repressed lesbian woman.   He is the young poet in the movie.  He is powerless to the terror that unfolds before him.  His face expresses fear and panic - the rest of his body doesn’t move.   He is intuitively aware of his moms sadness and knows she will leave him.  Without her love he doesn’t have the ability to create the framework that is necessary to see himself as something substantial.  Instead, he blows like a feather at the mercy of the changing weather.  I'm sad when I think of this scared boy. I'm sad about the feeling and pervasiveness of being powerless. 

I quickly go from sadness  to anger.

There is someone to blame for the terror.  the dad.  This time, unlike the boy,  I am not powerless. In my minds eye I grab a golf club, swing it high behind me -and crush the dads skull.  I have this same image often.  

Regardless of my perceived power, my body reacts to the dad as an unconscious reflex.  Without my permission or control,  I am engulfed with the chemical of fear and panic. I  feel it  pulsing and taking over.  In less than 10 minutes I go from an energized happy mood to complete flatness like a circuit breaker.   This - all from a jittering leaf in the corner of my porch. 

I wrote the above a few hours ago.  I meditated on the feeling of powerlessness.  How the feeling quickly goes from powerless, to "anger" to fear so quickly.   I'm in a much better mood after crying about it in my meditation.  It surprises me that the dad can have so much control even though he is estranged and thousands of miles away.