The Wild Ride

For fun, I placed my micro poem, "The Wild Ride" with its group of sketches into a flip book from Dynamic Drive. If you've come to this post indirectly and missed the home page you can find it here...


I originaly wrote this poem as a description of an OBE, or out of body experience.

A hall mark of surviving trauma, is developing the ability to disasociate. In many ways, I have found that OBE's and disasociation have a number of similarities, and I suspect may even be linked in some mysteriously biological way.

As I began doing sketches for this poem, I found the imagery to be highly erotic. At first, this disturbed me. I wanted to show the beauty of bodily escape, not to produce a seductive image.

As the image continued to emerge, I found myself oddly enchanted, and slightly embarassed to recognise the character is in the process of pleasuring herself!

I spent a long while sitting 'round, pondering, what to do, what to do? What will people think?

So I revisted my goal, my purpose, my experiment into creative healing.

That's when I realized that the imagery had to stay. One of the biggest obstacles to healing has been a certain self loathing that I think, is common to many survivors such as myself. My particular self hatered has manifested in my life in various ways, the most damaging ways involved smoking (slowly killing myself with poison), self deprivation, anorexia, binge drinking, self isolation, the list goes on. Happily, I've kicked the butt, or at least I've stopped buying cigarettes, but do indulge in an occassional cigar. I havn't missed a day of eating in several years, and no longer drink save special occassions or the odd crystal cold beer during the hot summer months. I'm doing good.

I'm doing good because I have finally been able to get the poison out, you know the anger, the disapointment, the rage over the absolute betrayal of my young self at the hands of those who were supossed to care for me.

To say I am completely out of anger would be a dangerous lie. Dangerous I say, because for decades I repressed my anger, afraid of what would happen should I let it show, hell, afraid of what would happen if I even let myself feel it. Hence, disasociation and the slow disconnect between my mind, my heart, and my body the real reason behind my anorexia. This bodily disconnect allowed me to go days without even feeling the need to eat.

To say my anger is magically gone, would be to fatefully tempt that illusionist, that magician called Psyche, to once again close the shutters of my eyes and lull me back into a sense of complacency and denial I can't afford.

I decided to stay with the erotic image because of the healing power of self love. And what better illustration of loving yourself is there? In my particular experience, it was my sexuality that was attacked, exploited, controlled, and to some extent, damaged, and so, after careful deliberation, I decided this is the perfect image for what I am trying to do here, learning to Love my Self.