August 02, 2007
Snail Girl
Well, guess who hopped on the spiritual bandwagon last week , as requested -- the aspect of self known as Snail Girl, closely related to Skunk Girl and other traumatically dissociated parts of self that give me trouble from time to time until I can bear to stop hating them long enough to find compassion within myself for myself
I had my first teensy encounter with Snail Girl at the end of a shaman-induced theta trance when I startled awake with the unseemly thought that I didn't care much about being alive. Did I ask myself if I was experiencing a memory of what it was like to be a child in my family? Of course not, I terrified myself, and spent the weekend worrying about entering the gray state of ennui that was my youth while immersed in trashy novels for distraction.
During my second encounter with Snail Girl, I entered the state of hopeless immobility/depression. A familiar spot which I am always loath to revisit. I worry each time I go that I will get stuck there for years on end. It has happened before. At the end of forty five minutes I was able to find some observing shard of myself and recognize that Snail Girl isn't all of who I am . She is generally quite crusty and hard to contact, which is fine with me.
The next day, I happened upon and shot a snail, thus capturing the metaphor visually. Hard shell, tightly wrapped, protecting a mushy sluggish formless being, with no energy and no light. The outer shell is brittle but not unattractive, the inside gelatinous and unappealing. No wonder I avoid her. Her shell represents the brittle false self developed to protect her from a critical mother. It's public presentation masks the lethargic unformed sluggish self with no motivation, no spark of life.
Of course, the more functional aspects of myself want nothing to with Snail Girl, for they are filed with light and laughter, fun and flow.
Photo note: See the arrow pointing to Snail Girl?