NON-FICTION — AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Chapter 34 — Costa Rica and Shame

Kintsugi: Making, Breaking, and Putting Pieces Back Together Again

The rush to discover the treasures of Costa Rica was in stark contrast to the gradual explorations we had experienced in Mexico the previous winter. My camera was kept busy providing me with all sorts of interesting images. When we settled into a condo in Playa Jaco, we spent a lot of time exploring the west coast of Costa Rica. It took almost two weeks before we finally began to relax and establish new patterns of living in Coast Rica.

The Pacific Ocean had captured our attention. We headed out almost every evening to watch the sunset, almost hypnotised by the colours of Costa Rican sunsets. It was at this time, two weeks into this paradise, when a return of disquietude, or dis-ease began to appear within me.

The heat of the sun had begun to affect me as if I had been tossed into a pot of boiling water, simmering before bursting into a bubbling out of inner stuff that had been held onto for too long. Not aware of the darkness was beginning to seep out, I was caught by surprise as another conflict with M became heated.

She recognised what was happening as she had been down this road before and she was becoming more and more anxious about my mental health, and angry at me for turning this paradise into one of the circles of Hell.

“I was feeling conflicted and low in a way, but not really depressed, just a bit lost and empty. Life does that to a person. I sometimes get so into my head, so into the sky, that I lose sight of what lies beneath the sky. And, in being lost in the sky, I fail to notice that I have begun to operate unconsciously, not my usual somewhat aware self. And in doing so, conflict finds its way back into the picture as I rail against this incursion of shadow into my “self.” I can’t wander unconsciously acting in ways that spill out either, something that happens when I get too caught up in my head.” [January 13, 2010]

As the conflicts reappeared, I once again took refuge in stripping off clothing. In behind our studio was a tiny walled space just big enough for me to use as a private sunbathing area. It wasn’t long before this private time became needed more and more. I found I would become agitated when I couldn’t get private healing time.

The agitation of denied nudity found its way into my dreams. I recorded one dream that spoke to the issue of masculinity:

“. . . I am in a conflict with a woman I don’t know and feel a sense of impending loss . . . I turn to her and ask her why she is leaving me, why she is abandoning me . .. she tells me it is because I have a penis . . . the conflict continues and the stakes seem to be rising . . . I again ask her why she is leaving me . . . she tells me that my penis is not huge and hard enough . . .”

‘What’s that about?’ I wondered. I knew enough about dreams to know this wasn’t about M. I knew that the appearance of a female in a man’s dream has to do with either the anima, the feminine nature of a man that is best known as his soul; or, there has been an archetype activated, that of the Mother.

What was the message coded into the dream? Was I finding myself lacking as a man, perhaps feeling emasculated because of ongoing conflicts with M? The dream didn’t give answers, it simply allowed the psyche to know it was time to pay careful attention. Sexuality, sexual identity, body awareness: so much was arising from the depths, contaminating and challenging our marriage.

Nudity was becoming more and more of an issue between us as I fought to gain control of what was happening to me. I was struggling. ‘Why do I need to be nude?’ It was in the middle of this struggle when I took the nudity out from the private enclosure and into the condo itself.

I dared to be nude in our shared space. Nudity became like a poison as it crept into M’s space, her only place of normality in the tiny condo. I retreated and tried harder to keep my clothing on when she was in the condo, making sure that I used only the tiny, tiny sunspace at the back of the condo.

The efforts failed as they always seemed to fail. ‘What kind of a husband am I not to give her what she needed from me?’ M wasn’t denying me the right to be nude; she only asked for boundaries for her own well-being.

Near the end of the first month in Jaco, I took a photo which I pasted onto a photo I had taken of a full moon. The result was called the man in the moon and I placed it on my blog site. It was the second nude photo of me that had ever been taken. The first had been taken by M while they were in Cuba in December 2004. In the post with the photo, the man in the moon, I wrote:

“Being transparent, allowing the unconscious contents to inform consciousness so that we have the courage to cease being desperately straight-jacketed . . . The image of the Vitruvian Man is all about wholeness … the presentation of the Vitruvian Man as a nude by Leonardo da Vinci, is all about transparency, about stripping away of masks and being able to see the true man, vulnerable and yet powerful for all vulnerability.” [January 29, 2010]

I was stunned and very uncomfortable and surprised that my issues had spilled into the public space of the Jungian psychology blog site. I was afraid more than anything else, of putting our marriage in jeopardy with this very public display.

The doubts and worry were swirling through my head as if I was in the middle of a cyclone. I panicked knowing I was putting our marriage at risk. I didn’t know what to say to try and fix what was becoming broken. I was broken and it showed with my dysfunctional behaviours. Ashamed, I retreated into silence and tried to banish the practice of nudity. Resisting being nude only resulted making the problems worse.

Previously

I want to thank the following people for reading this story:

Brian Lageose, Robert, Dennis Koluris • M.Sc., Bill Harris, Mariana Busarova, Alberto Ocando, Chase Dalton, Mr. Plan ₿, Harshil Mevasa, Author, D. Denise Dianaty, Loicrees, and Buddhi Ruparathna, Lady De Ville, Pete JJ, Tina Here, Patricia O’Neill, Domino Cat, Lisa Duffy-Korpics, Sai Ezra, and Trinity Ellis, Author