I am so grateful to each of you. This is exactly the response I needed.
It's interesting. Right after I posted this I listened to a talk on fb, a teacher I admire. He spoke about this very thing. How being present with suffering is an essential component to becoming free. That suffering brings up memories from the past, in the form of pain, which we project onto the present. That we have the opportunity to remember our freedom in the context of this pain, as we through off the projections. That we know longer need. That is, we can lance the boil, so to speak.
And this is exactly what we did. Each of you had empathy for me. And this permitted me to lance this pain and drain it. That is what we do for each other here. What a great gift. I love you all.
M came over and we went out to eat. When I left I said, I'm going to lose $700. Better that, he said, than to feel unsafe.
Maybe I needed this to know if I would be safe there. It is not about my own woundedness. It is about their safety. I have not written this off. Yet. But I need to work hard to not take on the brokenness and the shame of this. You have helped me do this very much.