1. Death Cackling

I transcribed the next Session “Death Cackling” to illustrate how it was, as an adult, to have a fragile unconscious representation of my legs. (I refer to this Session in the book Sundial in the Shadow, episode 11, Introspection Through Self-Massaging the Legs) 

Sept 4. 2002
SESSION. Death Cackling

We went to the beach. JuanPa smokes almost every day. As soon as he parked, he took out his pipe. I wanted to smoke too. It was a cool natural environment. I wanted to enjoy my time there, even though I knew that smoking was not the perfect way to do it. I needed to go to the restroom. Like any public bathroom, it was cold, somewhat dirty and white, desolate, lonely. I closed the door behind me and stood there for a while.

What if JuanPa is not a good person? What if he hurts me? Who is him after all? What could I expect from a potter I barely know? (…) I felt I was the death. My body got cold and I stood there for a long time. (…) I heard JuanPa’s voice calling me. He was with Mateo. (…) I came out and decided to follow them to the beach. On our way, (…) I laughed at times, and other times, I asked JuanPa about the safety of the steep stretch. (…) I had to bend down a few times to avoid slipping. JuanPa and Mateo moved forward faster. 

About halfway through the route, some people passed us in the opposite direction. I felt that they would notice I was high and I felt ashamed, although I was ready to ignore them, so they would not intrude on my life. In this area, people are usually very friendly and easily start conversations, but I was somehow upset at others and did not want to address anyone.

(…) A couple passed by. They made a funny comment about how we got our feet muddy, as we were closer to the beach. JuanPa and I laughed with them and at that moment, I perceived myself as a hen. I flapped my wings and laughed in a rather shrill voice. I made exaggerated, unnecessary movements and gestures, shook my shoulders and my head as if I were an insecure little woman, mischievous or embarrassed at a compliment.  

I didn’t like my voice because it was shrill. I probably didn’t move like that, but I felt like I was behaving just like a hen, crouching, cackling, and flapping around. We continued our descent. When I came back from the hen trip, I realized that maybe that’s how I usually am. Full of movements and attitudes that say nothing; an exaggeration, and above all, very clumsy. When I decided to get up and keep moving upright, I heard my legs break.

As that couple walked away, my legs were snapping and my bones were completely splitting. I could hear them breaking like an eggshell, a dry branch. Like weak bases that can’t resist standing up. My legs faltered and I had to strain myself not to lose my balance and fall. I kept moving silently immersed in a complex analysis of my inner situation. Dr. Constain had once asked me if my skinny-leg complex was due to have a weak foundation. A metaphorical interpretation of the physical pain that I felt in my legs at that time. It was possible that my intellectual foundations were weak and now I confirmed it with that cracking that I now experienced, listened to, and felt thanks to the observation of my unconscious thoughts with the herb. 

The impression stayed in my mind for a long time. My mental foundations had been broken. The rupture was drawn in my mind. A dry tree that breaks into a thousand pieces. My legs were splintered and shattered. A hen. That was me. A hen that breaks when it sits up. Death cackling. I felt ashamed (…) We finally reached that beach. It took too much to get there! And in one go, I found the sea. Immense in front of us. I was surprised that it was NOT scary for me like before! Its size, its strength, its power … Sometimes I couldn’t bear to look at it without being drawn to merge with it. (…)    

2. Therapeutic Shredding

This shows how much anger there was in my mind when I had phobias made of unexpressed fury underneath fear and sadness. This is cited in the book Sundial in the Shadow, episode 14, Forgiving vs. Innerstanding. 

March 11/03. I woke up before dawn, I was afraid but no longer of the dark or of everything. I was afraid specifically of that man. He must be angry because I started to say what he did to me. He must be ready to attack. I raised my head and looked around to check that everything was alright and to know if he was there or not. I was afraid; it wasn’t anxiety, it wasn’t hunger, it wasn’t I-don’t-know-what; it was fear! And since I couldn’t take revenge for what he did to me, that fear turned into anger.

I became so angry that I started blaming his wife in my mind. That cousin who must have known everything. I imagined that if one day I met her and she demanded something of me, then I would slap her. I imagined quite intensely how I would slap her over and over again without stopping. There would be nothing to stop me because the joy I felt imagining that I slapped her was infinite. There would be no time to stop once I started. I would slap her over and over again. I imagined it and felt pleasure. I kept slapping her intensely. Maybe I would put myself on top of her body to dominate her and prevent her from moving or defending herself.

I would grab her by the neck and tell her what she was going to die of while with the other hand I would slap her endlessly. In my mind, this was repeated over and over. But then I thought that materially speaking, I would never do this because even if I did it, I don’t think it would satisfy my perpetual desire. Assuming that I slapped her, I would not stop anymore. And then someone would step in and I would get in trouble. Even if no one interrupted me, I wouldn’t feel like stopping. The enjoyment of hitting her would be unsatisfied anyway because one or 100 slaps made no difference.

With a little non-seductive gesture in my face, I kept slapping her a thousand times, and even so, I still wanted to persist in an obsessive, exhausting way. I grabbed my head, tired, unsatisfied. I suffered. Hatred had a hold of me and it was making a whirlwind in my head as grief does. Unintentionally, I struck again and again, clenching my teeth tightly. Suddenly, I wondered, how far would I go with this impulse that seemed not to be satisfied? I relaxed, and then I felt entitled to imagine whatever I wanted.

I would hit her so badly that the muscles in her face would break little by little and between blood and broken flesh, I would reach her bones. Then I could clearly see how I took the long bone and broke it with my hands. I even saw it splintered and a piece in each hand. I did it over and over again in my head and it seemed that this did produce an end. This would make me finish and I was very satisfied. Over and over again, hitting her so many times, the muscles began to break; then amid dripping blood and broken flesh, the long white bone would appear, which I would hold tightly and break in two.

But … wait a second, in the face there is no such long bone as the ones in the arms or legs; there is only a skull … Well, I imagined that I smashed it with a hammer. I took the hammer and with one and another and another blow, I would pulverize that skull. That alone would make me feel fulfilled. Getting to that point gave me pleasure and also made me feel powerful. At this point, my face looked totally monstrous. My gaze was sharp, the breathing was heavy, and my nose raised like a bull; enervated. A beast. JuanPa was right when he told me that inside of me there was a lot of anger and I did not believe him; I did not perceive it.

Anyway, I felt powerful and what’s more, I felt that it wasn’t enough to just do this to her. I would do it to everyone who surrounded me when I was a child. To my dad, for being naive. Too bad if he paid for this, if I walked away from him and blamed him. Why didn’t he put me on treatment? Why didn’t he help me? Why did he resign himself to not communicating with me? He would deserve it. And to my brothers for being selfish, for not having realized that I suffered, or maybe they did; and to my mother, because despite everything I went through, she continued to be aggressive towards me. Because she was never my friend.                

And to my second cousins. I would slap those too until their muscles broke and then I would hit the bone and ruthlessly break it. Like when they all shred chicken bones. They remove the meat with their hands and peel the bones. I would do so to everyone. I would slap all of them, one by one many times until I broke their flesh, and then between blood and broken flesh, I would break their bones with my own little hands. 

I felt bad. Beast, powerful. At that moment JuanPa put his head on my arm, which hurt me, and I immediately got rid of him ready to mistreat him if he didn’t get off me quickly! My facial gesture was of desperation; I didn’t want anything to interrupt or distract me. I was not willing to feel imprisoned again. However, the way I moved him away was so smooth that he didn’t feel a thing or wake up. I continued to feel like a heroine, owner of revenge and terror until my disfigured gestures began to relax little by little and return to normal.

After that severe shredding, I relaxed and began to understand some of my symptoms. My sensitivity to the weight of JuanPa’s head in my arm due to having felt oppressed by the weight of the aggressor. I reject everything that makes me feel the same. This is associated with my fear of being locked up or being forced to do what I don’t want. The fear of being locked up was already taking on an exaggerated dimension; the planet was too small, even on the street I was short of air to breathe (…)

3. How I had to learn to call Cannabis or Marijuana “doctor”

While not all the readers of the book Sundial in the Shadow would need to know why I call the plant Cannabis “doctor” in episode 16, others might deduce why. That’s why I didn’t include this explanation in that book. However, since probably other readers would like to know why, I decided to explain that here. It is not necessary to know why in order to understand Sundial in the Shadow, anyway, and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the story with this. 

At the end of the about 2 year-process that I undertook to find the causes of my depression by myself, I realized that I had not really done that by myself. I received the help of the plant.

What my psychotherapist, who was also a psychiatrist, could have achieved, the plant did it for me. She took his place much later when he passed away. That’s why now I call her a doctor. I had to find the causes of my depression with Dr. Marijuana. 

In 2012, after I read a book on shamanism and consulted shamans, I learned that all plants have a spirit. They are alive. They are beings. I confirmed that indeed the spirit of the plant, like a qualified practitioner, had helped me to regress to my childhood and/or access my unconscious mind where the causes of illnesses and their solutions reside.