Intimacy IV: What Ayahuasca Left Me Wondering
INTIMACY, A Series I’ve been spending time, intimately, thinking about intimacy, since last time I posted about falling into me. My feelings are not unique. Maybe by sharing mine, you won’t feel so alone in yours. After a year of uprooting my past, and learning to just BE with me without doing, I feel more clarity: RADICAL SELF LOVE is what I seek and it starts and ends with me. We can only connect to the extent we’ve connected to ourselves — physically and emotionally. I will always be learning.
December 15, 2021
Part 4: December 15, 2021
I shared my Intimacy Series, I, II and III Pre-Ayahuasca journey. And have since been contemplating what Ayahuasca left me wondering, Am I Unlovable?
I’ve done psychedelic assisted therapy with MDMA + Psilocybin for the past year, preparing me, and suffice it to say, Ayahuasca was far and away the most challenging and profound experience I’ve had to date. A hallucinogenic brew made from the vine of a specific tree and the leaves of another, whose major active ingredient, DMT, is the substance I began my medicine journeys with September 2020. But She, Ayahuasca, I mean, She’s different. Imagine sitting with all your traumatic memories, dark shadows, fears, and your truth for 6 hours. She’s sneaky, brilliant and powerful - and merges with your subconscious if you allow her to, revealing what you need to see – about you. And boy did she show me. She isn’t something to play with.
Pre-journey, you take on a specific dieta: no animal products, caffeine, alcohol, violent TV or sexual activity for two weeks. Dare I say, I was really really clean. For six+ hours I sat with her, and her me. But she didn’t come on quickly. I drank my first cup and waited for her to turn up, and nothing. After an hour, I took another 3/4 cup down and it wasn’t long before she came around, but coquettish. My friend Sacha said it best, “she’s cheeky.” I felt her warmth, like sunlight, engulf me, but only momentarily. And then she went dark again, and again before she actually began playing. Why? She was withholding her love - as I do, showing me how light I can be, and simultaneously how dark and shut down. She is me.
After she played hide and go seek, she became me, and I curled into a ball, and cried, howls bellowing from my gut, buried deep under layers of toughening. When a memory became too scary, she pivoted, because it only works when you surrender and I wasn’t completely ready for everything. I’ll save details for the book (fingers crossed/pray for me), but beyond trauma, I mostly sat facing me. After hours of imagery, feeling, music, dancing, trauma, and memory, She showed me my current relationship, He as a mirror of me, revealing behaviors my conscious knows but doesn’t face daily. “He’s just asking you to dance,” she said to me, repeatedly, less future more present,“Start playing.” I am a very sexual being, but for years my sexuality has been shut down, because sex was never something I chose, sex was something that happened to me, starting early. As a result, I just performed to feel worthy + keep my relationships going. So much of my healing is about taking back my body, and as Ayahuasca suggested, I will start playing.
The real work, however, isn’t the journey, but the integration following, taking what you’ve learned and merging it into your daily routine, often unlearning a lifetime of habits. Post journey, it is advised that you edge into your vices of choosing slowly, because Aya stays with you for up to ten days. But for me it wasn’t that seamless — the transition from journey to integration, dare I say I jumped back into my everyday too quickly. And post-journey, I regressed, emotionally, without realizing the depth of my process, kind of bypassing, momentarily.
Excuses invalid, but my boyfriend's mom was in town for the night following. He was respectful, “no pressure,” But I wanted to meet her. Still in shock, no doubt, Aya still in me, I joined them for dinner and indulged in a beer and some “cooked” sushi. (The idea of raw fish, after going vegan briefly, made me queasy.) The meeting was lovely but the next day I woke up panicking. My heart was beating out of my chest, both from the alcohol, and caffeine I consumed upon waking. I needed to quell the anxiety, so I did what I’ve done for decades, a brief run before boxing. I moved through my feelings and found grounding. “My mom left, lets reconnect.” I agreed, because I missed him and him me, but I didn’t fully explain my boundaries. I am avoidant at times, and he can be needy, which creates rocky footing. “Great, but first I’m going to get a massage, see you later.” When I arrived at the spa, he had booked a session simultaneously. I was shook. I wanted to be alone, and he wanted to support me, which just made me feisty. And after dealing with my shadow for hours on end, she - my ego - my inner bitch - was NOT hiding. I was nasty.
This early in the game relationship again left me questioning my own boundaries. Driving the next eve, and arguing over nothing, in the heat of the moment, I inquired, “Are we incompatible or am I just intolerable?” And that inquiry wasn’t half as bad as what happened the next morning. We had sex, delicious connected intimate sex, which is brilliant when shared with a partner who is interested in your pleasure, too. He pulled out (safe sex, right?) and said immediately after, “I hope I didn’t come too soon.” Inner bitch didn’t miss a beat, she **I replied quickly,“Ugh, I wish you weren’t so nice to me.” Crazy! But so telling of the men I’ve previously dated, and dare I say have been attracted to, who were never concerned with my needs! Can you imagine that’s how my subconscious thinks? Picking men who treat me less than and ignore me to prove my stories, because I think I’m unlovable. Because I don’t feel worthy — of kindness. How sad! This is among the marks trauma has left on me, which I didn’t realize until integration therapy days later, after a weekend of terrorizing my boyfriend. Because he’s not typical for me - he sees me. So I push him away because he’s disproving my "unlovable" theory, because he doesn’t subscribe to it.
What's the fear, Olivia?
It’s simple. I’m afraid he might see,
All of me,
And love me regardless
Of all the darkness I’ve seen.
He might prove me wrong,
Entirely.
He might prove
That I’m worthy of love.
That I’m worth loving.
He arrived just shy of 5 months ago, while I was in deep healing mode: a reflection of me, lovable and so loving, mirroring my energy. He listens, and doesn’t get angry or shut down when I ask what he’s feeling. And he isn’t running, which scares me. So I test his masculine energy, try to push him away by challenging him with my bravado, because I’ve never felt safe to live fully in my femininity. PTSD left me needing to protect me, becoming my pain, my shame, a fighter, hardened so no one could hurt me — like a tootsie pop, my favorite, hardAF shell but inside soft + sweet.
I spent the following week alone, taking the space I needed. Reflecting on all the years I’ve withheld love, from others and me, stuck in the belief that I’m unloveable, and choosing others to prove my story. Ayahuasca mirrored my fear of intimacy, how I shut down, because I’m untrusting. Can I trust me? So often, I’ve pushed friends and lovers away, because I’ve never felt safe, which is why I’ve always felt lonely. And still, I’m grateful, because without the trauma + depth of pain, I wouldn’t be nearly as resilient or able to feel so deeply. But “unlovable” is a feeling that needs expiring. If I want love - I have to become love - ly. Instead of hiding behind the armor I’ve so long worn to protect me, I have to be vulnerable, raw, real, I’ve always said “messy is sexy.” This medicine work is a mirror into me, Ayahuasca showed me my shadow, my darkness, so I can be light, embodied. I am no longer staying in my wounding, picking emotionally unavailable men to prove my “unloveable” theories. But as Carl Jung says, “Confronting the shadow means to stop blaming others.” This isn’t about anyone else, but me.
So, I asked myself, What does truth feel like?
Freedom. —I responded.
We must unlearn who we were to become who we are .
I’m unlearning.
Ayahuasca showed me that I’m not unlovable,
On the contrary, I’m free. To play.
To love, be loved, And love all of me.
Intimacy 5, stay tuned — Everything You Need is Inside.
xx Love Always, Olivia
Intimacy Diaries I, II, III, here.
End of 2021, Letting Go of A Lifetime of Trauma, here.