How Do We Define Healing?

By Jim Thompson: I am a man of some seventy one summers, single and with an active life. I work part time and have several creative and fulfilling hobbies. I am a supervisor for one of the morning sessions in our local Mens Shed. I read and study a wide range of technical literature and online forums and technical publications. I would describe myself as something of a polymath. My interests range from the Enneagram, psychology to electronics and composite construction methods as used in aerospace, just to name a few.
I mention this to indicate that my days are very full. I have the sense of a certain urgency to learn a lot while being aware that my time is limited. The older I get, this sense grows stronger. Carpe Diem is the expressions that sums up this feeling. Not at all uncommon for us older folks.
I have a very good woman friend who has been quietly but consistently trying to get me to go out on various social occasions, film screenings and such. She is persuasive to this end; something that I appreciate the spirit of. Not for the reasons that I think that it will work by her definition, but because of the expression of care, consideration and love that it conveys. I will refer to my woman friend as M.
I had told her some weeks ago that she probably did not realise just how radicalised I had become over the last ten years or so.
I use the term radicalised here to refer to the degree of Red Pill awareness that I had accumulated over this time. However our following discussion, which I will relate later, may have convinced her to some extent.
I have started to go out to lunch once a week with M and some of her women friends. During one conversations with them, the subject of relationships was, inevitably, discussed. I then stated quite simply that I would never live with a woman again. My friend M said quite sharply and dismissively; “you’re fucked then”!
I said nothing at the time, as others were talking and I was a bit stunned. Besides, I knew my response required some considerable thought to articulate it well and convincingly. So I went away and thought about it for the rest of the week.
The next week we met for lunch, it was only me and M.
After the usual small talk and ordering of lunch, I told M that I had been thinking all week about her appraisal of my situation and my response.
I said that she was completely off the mark and that she might like to reflect on the many times I have been truly ‘fucked” in the past (to use her terminology) due to abuse, cruelty and deception at the hands of women.
Starting with my abduction by a total stranger woman at age six, which I have already written about here. Then with my being serially cheated out of house and possessions. My own Mother cheated me out of my first life savings. Was I fucked then I asked M?
Or she could consider my experiences of being falsely accused of assault by not just one, but two women? Did she consider this “being fucked”?
The second time this occurred I was saved by another woman mutual friend who turned up and challenged my partner to be honest and not call the Police. She had already called the local womens refuge and was just about to make the call to the Police.
I also asked M if she thought I was fucked having my only child stolen from me never to be seen again.
I sure figure that I was!
It took me a long while to be even able to talk about this major traumatic event in my life; I will never truly get over it in the full sense of the word.
I continued on with my monologue, which was by now turning into more of a rant and I was beginning to shake with repressed rage; much to my chagrin, as she did not deserve such an outburst.
To M’s considerable credit, she listened patiently with increasingly obvious unease. I continued on with a couple more similar accounts.
Then I stopped talking.
Then, M said; But don’t forget there are women out there actually being abused by men.
At this stage my rage was no longer repressed and I found I was raising my voice.
I explained that society had been hearing about violence against women daily for at least forty years that I know of. On every mode of media, many times a day and with a vast number of organisations set up expressly to organise and disseminate discussions about female grievance. All at the taxpayers expense. There is a huge industry based on the victimhood of women. As soon as some of us Men start to discuss Mens Issues, there is nearly always a woman somewhere in the audience who wants to turn the attention back to their celebrated and inflated sense of entitlement by saying, “what about us”. Let’s bring the discussion back to women!
I was clearly angry by this stage.
M was still taking it well. Astonishingly so!
Many women would have stormed out in tears or worse in her situation. I was so emotionally affected, I barked unfairly at the waiter for bringing us the wrong order. (For which I later apologised profusely).
With that, we both stopped talking for a while.
Then M said she would like to see me seek some form of healing for my vulnerability and for the obvious damage and the resulting pain. Many suggestions followed, mainly of esoteric forms of “healing”. She was fully aware of the degree of my scepticism about such forms of healing as we have discussed such subjects at length over the years.
I explained that men generally are vulnerable in modern society and I don’t consider myself to be at all exceptional in that regard. When I was in my middle years, I enjoyed a normal degree of attraction to, and from, the opposite sex. I enjoyed a good sex life when not burdened by a fog of depression (which, to be fair, was much of the time). It was then that I was much more vulnerable than I am now! At times I shudder when I recall some of the dangerous situations I found myself in with pathological women in the past. My full awareness of this only became apparent much later.
I suggested to my friend that healing may come in many unlikely forms and definitions. It may be difficult to recognise and is almost certainly seldom, if ever, absolute.
I consider myself to be healing by the process of:

1. Becoming aware of reality as distinct from fantasy.
2. Learning to practice care for self. In the full sense of the word.
3. Becoming aware of what part I played in my unfortunate past experiences and
4. Working to stay alert to the danger of repeating the past.

In short, growing up!
What I did not have the heart to say was that true healing will not be founded on the concept of romantic love.

About Jim Thompson

Jim has worked for much of his life as a handyman. He has also worked as a Television Cameraman, a boat builder, an organic market gardener and construction worker. He has read and studied the Enneagram for over thirty years. His favourite reading subjects include psychology, mythology, history, science and engineering. Current hobbies include open source computer operating systems, computer assisted drawing, and the design and construction of composite model aircraft.

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