Tw: mentions of consequences of programm*ng (without detail) and holocaust trauma, derealization about time and memories

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Scotland, you brought me joy, awe and amazement, a combination I rarely feel. I stood there Iooking at your mountains and streams and realized the world is big and magnificent. But I didn’t feel small. I let it be big and I let myself be there as I am. I let myself take in the view, look at it with joy, awe and amazement. I let myself fill the landscape with my big feelings as you felt so welcoming of big emotions and big pasts. I was surprised to feel this good as I allowed such space to exist within me. I never felt like this before. You were big so I allowed myself to be big too, just as a fact, no shame or judgment, no limitations. If you can grow mountains and have water fall endlessly from cliffs, I can let my reality exist too. You weren’t scared to be big so I wasn’t either. I left with you some of me, to take care of and give space to. 

In various ways, my past has made me self centered. I needed to – without judgment on my part, simply a mere fact – to be able to survive what was going on with me. Parts of me were created with no past or future with a purpose ingrained so strong they were made to feel extremely intensely important. There was in your magnificent splendor a way for me to relinquish this and take back the place I have, but without shame. Again, only as a mere fact. And it felt good to do so. “You’re not the center of the world”, that phrase I heard so often with mean intentions was not uttered. The truth felt more like this phrase: “the world exists”. Because it does, I can relinquish my feeling that I am to carry it, alone, and no one understands me. I left behind the intense impression that I have to be there for the world to exist and I’m that important – and did so with great relief. I never wanted to feel this way in the first place. 

Littles and Middles learned about the history of Scotland, they enjoyed it so much. A while back, I struggled so much to understand time that dates didn’t make sense to me at all. If you’d said 1300 or -1 bc, I could not understand what that meant, dates such as 3 million years ago meant nothing to me. It wasn’t even a concept I could create in my mind. But now I can. Something clicked that never did before. Maybe I healed enough to be able to understand time in ways that programming and derealization prevented me from doing before. As I stood in a castle yesterday, listening to the audio guide talk about the Middle Ages I finally understood history. I could feel the life that was there before me. I thought of all the other castles I visited in my past. I thought about the French kings and queens. I think holocaust trauma also hurts very bad when I understand history. It hurts to go to battle fields, recall people’s pain and hurt and death. But maybe it’s still worth doing. Maybe it’s worth remembering. 

Littles read the section about prehistoric rock formation and listened to a podcast about geology in Scotland. I learned it was created a long long time ago through volcanoes and earthquakes, and then transformed by humans and sheep and cattle grazing. 

Upon looking at your mountains, glens and streams, I found myself looking for the noise that it must have made to create such beauty, none of this arose without noise, fire and massive changes in landscapes. You appeared from under the ocean, you were moved around by elements, wind and water mostly. Fire maybe as well. Each rock I picked up can tell me about the world but I missed the noise, I invented it in my head. The memories arising from the landscape brought great moments of contemplation. Cliffs constantly hit by waves. Water non stop falling from high grounds creating gigantic waterfalls. Streams that are two and become one. Paths that have water falling down them turning them into little rivers. What will all this look like in a year? In 100 years? In 1000 years? I don’t know but now I know the meaning behind those numbers. 

Another source of historical wonder was peat. Peat contains particles from millions of years ago layered onto one another informing us about eruptions, climate change and weather conditions over time. It literally hosts history. It also contains so much co2 it is preventing part of global warming. It’s vital to our survival and it’s home to the memory of the world, stuck under watery bogs you can’t even step on. It’s a swamp that’s keeping us alive. It sometimes looks safe to walk on, but it can be 10 feet deep and you risk disappearing if you don’t walk on the safe zones. But they built little bridges to walk on, sometimes waterproof shoes are enough to walk around.

I realized Scotland was there before I came and it’d be there once I left. That’s not something I usually allow myself to realize. In the past, places deserved to disappear from view and mind. Entire towns, its people and pets were erased from my mind. But this time I won’t let it happen. I’ll work in conjunction with my mind pales to remember. I want to remember. I also want to see it again so it has to exist still when I’m gone! 

My story is one of great sadness and challenges and when I was standing in the middle of such big landscapes, I felt it become small and I became a star in the universe. I didn’t know I’d ever feel like this.