Page 39 of All That Has Flown Beyond
One day deep in December, Kaiyo received a call. There was a small baby moose in Clara’s garden. He felt familiar.
Her grateful tears had been part of the payment, as was the peace Kaiyo felt inside.
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The fog inside Kaiyo would still curl into the world around him sometimes. Exhaustion, doubt, failure. Sometimes, ridiculously, it would thicken around him when he had done well and was praised for his work. He would return home feeling jittery and anxious, hating himself for the displaced feeling.
“I just don’t get it. Why then? Why when things are going good?” Kaiyo asked Claudia. He didn’t see her regularly anymore but still booked an appointment every once in a while, when he felt he needed mental health advice from someone skilled he knew and trusted.
“Kaiyo, you have changed a tremendous amount since we first met. However, when you are thinking about yourself, where does your mind instinctively go? To a positive thought or a negative?”
“Well…I mean, I try. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at, you know. Loving myself or whatever.”
“You have. Tremendously. In all the ways that count, your ability to focus on the more positive or solution-based parts of a situation has grown exponentially. Unfortunately, this does not eradicate all traces of negative cycles. Or has it?”
“No. I mean…yeah. Definitely not. I still have to constantly be, like…cranking at that wheel to keep myself from slipping into negative shit. It’s easier, don’t get me wrong, but…yeah.”
“Right. And that’s completely, utterly normal. The important thing is that you keep trying to crank that wheel. However, this can be tiring. For people whose negative wheel is nice and oiled and positive wheel is harder to turn, to use your example, it can sometimes be difficult to deal with a lot of positive stimuli aimed at the self. These people often have a voice that wants to constantly argue against every positive aspect of themselves. So, when you receive a lot of praise, that voice can go into overdrive, and you’ll have to expel a lot of energy to crank that positive wheel, which can leave you exhausted both physically and mentally.
“Now, when you felt that way after all that praise and were feeling low after, what did you do internally? How did you react to it?”
“Well…I don’t know. I kind of…like, it was ridiculous. I felt it was ridiculous. Unfair. I’d had a good week. Things had gone well, and I get home and,bam! It just…and it scared me, I guess. I’m just worried it’ll…like, it was so out of the blue and nonsensical, I was scared it was me slipping back into that place, you know? The scary, nothingness place.”
“Yes. That’s completely understandable, Kaiyo. You evaluated the situation based on your own perception and experience. However, when we have a negative emotion, invalidating it is pretty much the worst thing you can do. You don’t have to forgive it or be like, ‘Oh, great! It’s you again’! You don’t have to think it’s fair. But youdohave to accept it as part of the reality of that moment.
“It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, or you don’t agree that it should be there or perhaps just don’t understand why it is. What helps you process it is saying, ‘Okay. This sucks, but you’re here. I’m not sure why, but I’m allowed to experience negative emotions, even when they don’t make sense to me or when I don’t want them. It’s okay. Feeling this is unpleasant, but it’s okay’. You need to accept fully—this is happening. Do you think that, now that you know more aboutwhyyou would feel like that after praise, it may be easier to accept it when it happens?”
“I mean…yeah, in a way, but I’m not sure that’s actually gonna make mefeelbetter. And I know! I know what you’re going to say. Sometimes it’s about not having the emotion escalate and…okay, yeah. It might do that but…urgh. I just…hate that it happens.”
“And so you should. It absolutely sucks. But don’t indulge in the hate so far that it causes you to reject the emotion. Accepting that the emotion is there is a necessary part of dealing with it. ‘Okay, you’re here. I’m allowed to feel this, even if I don’t want to. Now I can deal with the actual emotion instead of focusing on the situation and how fair or unfair it is or worrying about the impact of the emotion as if I can tell the future. All I can do is what I can do right now, and what my body is telling me it needs right now is comfort and care so…comfort and care it is’! And onto one of your coping mechanisms.”
“Yeah, yeah. All hail positive coping mechanisms.”
“Amen to that!”
“I literally feel like we’ve had this conversation a million times before.”
“It’s a necessary part of learning the lesson, I’m afraid. People often want to react to an emotion within its context until they’re reacting more to the situation than the emotion. They’re all like, ‘How can I fix this or that to not feel this way’?, or ‘Why do I feel this way in the first place’? In reality, the most effective way of dealing is saying ‘I feel X. Doesn’t matter why at this moment. All I know is, I feel X, I’m allowed to feel X, and feeling X means I need to take care of myself, so let’s attempt coping mechanism Y and Z’. This helps you generalize the use of the coping mechanisms instead of having to go through each situation as if you’ve never encountered it before.”
“I mean, that makes sense. You’re talking yourself out of a job, though.”
“That’s my intent with every patient, Kaiyo, believe me. And as much as I love you coming here and hope that it benefits you, you don’tneedme anymore. It’s good you come as a show of self-care, definitely, but you have taken on so much of what we’ve talked about. I know times are still tough and these feelings will keep popping up, but it’s the way that you deal with them, not that they come up in the first place, that makes the difference.”
Claudia smiled at him, her eyes warm. Kaiyo smiled back. He felt he would always want her advice, but he hoped what she said was true. Need was exhausting. Choice, on the other hand, was a liberation.
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As Kaiyo’s Ousía matured, so did his body.
The scars of his youth were not the only he acquired. Sometimes the situations he was called upon to help with were demanding not only on his mind but the integrity of his skin as he faced creatures difficult to defeat.
With these involuntary changes to his body came voluntary ones. Tattoos began to bloom across his body. Each had meaning and enhanced an element of his skill.
The seeing eye peering from the knowing power of the moose. A hand-poked design of feminine hands cradling the flower of intuition. Vines and petals painted across his body as if growing from his skin, hiding runes and secrets. The majestic balance of the Queen of the Night desert flower, pierced with enchanted ink to be invisible but for a single night a year, a sign of balance and good tidings.
Kaiyo grew from the earth and from the essence of himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
