As I walked out of the show last night my heart felt raw and exposed. It was the day before new years eve and Times Square was jammed with people. I felt the armor pop on and more defensive, frustrated and angry than I do on a normal day. As I walked I became aware of the dichotomy I felt between the open hearted tenderness I felt and the cold loneliness I was allowing to consume me. It reminded me of my theory that the arts really destroyed most little girls version of love and romance. I used to hold this theory to blame for my own failed ability to find love and be happy with it.
I was not allowed to watch "normal" TV as I grew up - PBS or nothing - unless as I often did was able to pull off sneaking some "real" TV. PBS like MTV used to have a very different programming 20 years ago, it was filled with the entertain like the old Fred Astair movies, or musicals like Brigadoon and shows like The Thin Man. My world was filled with these pieces of a "better" time and many many books. My family was not emotional or loving so my entire vocabulary around love and communication came from these stories. I took from these stories while they had loss and disappointment, in the end it always worked out some how, forgiveness, hope and love always seemed to prevail. I remember reading Anna Karenina as a young girl and thinking more about the passion and the love than the desperate ending that ended up destroying her life. I saw only the things I wanted to see which was something I had never felt which were passion, and undying love.
As I grew up I start to realize that I longed for a love, a friend, a relationship, a family that I had seen or read about while growing up. I thought a good life was full of happy endings and that if you were good enough everything would work out for the best in the end. This statement is crazy if you know anything about my life as happy endings rarely came and yet I hung to the hope perhaps clung to it to survive that some day I would find my own place where happy endings and love would flow. I just needed to be good enough to deserve it even though in the movies and books that was never a requirement. Fortunately (or not) life never provided me with a space or people that showed me this dreamy type of love and feeling and that it can only happened when you were able to write your own ending and you can ignore parts of the story you do not like.
What I noticed in the plays I saw over this weekend is that there were no happy endings but yet the characters and stories were still raw with emotion. For the first time I was able to see not only the passion and the love but the heartbreak and the pain. I had room in my mind and heart for both to exist without it destroying the story. I was moved in both plays by how these characters shared and talked and wore their hearts on their sleeves without fear. I saw that this was my new ideal, my new hope to cling to as I long for that life where the people around you are open, generous, loving and comfortable to share how they really feel. For me it is no longer about happy endings but the desire to have open hearts and open minds. The real romantic is able to face their fears, throw down the armor and just feel.
I saw my feet in yoga the other day and I realized how unfamiliar they seemed to me. I could not remember the last time I really looked at my body as my eyes always work to avoid and avert my own gaze. The last few days I have been paying attention and noticing the state of my body to try to bring it more into my sense of self rather than this foreign object in my peripheral self. With every step and breath I tried to pay more attention and am actually amazed at how much my body does for me. How could something so critical to my enjoyment of my life be so neglected and ignored?
So I started at my feet, which I see every day when putting on socks but do not really see. How is that possible? I guess it is just not registering as important anymore as I have seen them for 45 years. I have a lovely tattoo on one foot and the other is plain and white. My feet are in pretty good shape even though the arches often ache and when i wiggle my toes i feel stiff and tight across the top of my feet. They do so much for me and yet their pain I tend to ignore as just part of being feet. As I move up to my legs I remember for a moment the "early years" of shaving my legs. The fear, the often misstep and slicing a little piece of skin off, they were so foreign to me then and now I could shave my legs without any real effort. Through the years I have learned to trust my hands and know where my skin and the razor stops and starts. The skin is white and has various bruises and scars. I used to want to be tan so desperately that I would lay out in the sun with baby oil just trying to cook myself just to end up red, in pain, the peel and then back to very white again. I am lucky my legs have no varicose veins (yet?) and are strong and able.
My knees and ankles have held up well and I have never had surgery or injury. I do notice real pain in my ankles when I start jogging especially if I have not run in awhile. My knees, ankles and hips get stiff and pop and crackle like a bad musical but I have learn to expect that "at my age" but I wonder is it genetics, weight, diet or just the evolution of impermanence? My thighs are triangle shaped from the extra weight that I am carrying. It is surprising how big my thighs are as I do not remember them ever being this wide, but I am on the heavier side of my weight spectrum right now. As a child my mother told me that if your thighs touch that you are fat. I used to spend years in every shower putting my feed together and seeing if my thighs touch and if they did seeing that look on her face of disappointment. All though lately it has been a long time since they did not touch and I have stopped looking but I know the disappointment is there for her (if she still talked to me) and me. With horror I realized the other day that my jeans were so tight they had rubbed a red rash on the inside of my thigh. I felt deep shame and then I immediately erased the thoughts it from my consciousness but the shame remains.
For the squeamish I would stop now, all thought I cannot imagine who would be reading with any interest about this at all. My stomach is a diaster. I am one of the fortunate women (not) who gains weight in her belly (and thighs and ass) so I have this rolling doughy look that is actually uncomfortable when I sit. You add that with my breast that sag down and the whole thing is this rolls and folds of skin jutting out so I could pass for 4-5 month pregnant, maybe less but not by much. I have stretch marks from my 10.5 pound son, scars from my gallbladder removal and from the scars from the three lumps removed from my breast. As I have gained weight my breast have gotten bigger and I am thankful that I was not born with large breast. They are terribly uncomfortable and just lay like saggy water ballons. When sitting down I feel squished together, layers of discomfort, and even breathing seems laborious.
The back of me I cannot see well but what I do see is the back of my thighs and my ass have that cottage cheese cellulite look. My back on the other hand is ordinary white. The freckles I had so pervasively on my back as a child have diminished significantly as I have stopped trying to bake myself alive with baby oil. My shoulders slump as most people these days who spends hours on the computer. I remember my father used to always get on me for my posture and in the morning before school would make me lay on the floor and straight my back and lower back to avoid getting scoliosis. I see these older people walking around the streets completely hunched over and I worry from time to time. To be so limited to never be able to stand up or sit up straight again seems frightening. My shoulders and neck are constantly stiff and feel twangy. I roll my neck and I can hear the grinding of the vertebrae on vertebrae. I do not know if it is my bed, my pillow, my genes, my stress or my inactivity that keeps this constant pain and tension but I have just accepted this feeling as well.
My arms are freckled but more mottled looking that the millions of freckles I used to have. As a kid I would get teased and questions about all my freckles, they would ask me how many freckled did I think I had, try to count them or guess that there were millions. I never really tried to count and was embarrassed of my own skin being so different than all the tan beautifully brown kids. I had a boyfriend tell me I obviously did not want to be tan enough otherwise I would be and when I questioned him how he shrugged but he was convinced it was an attitude issue. I wish I could find him now (not really) and explain melanin. So now they have faded a bit and freckles are no longer misunderstood, I had almost forgotten about how I used to hate them. All I hate now on my arms is that I am starting to see signs of a flabbiness in my arms, the wave good-bye that keeps going. Ugh. On the up side my skin looks younger and healthier rather than many of my age group, I think it is probably because while growing up my father made me always wear long sleeves, long pants, a hat...basically i looked like a muslim in hijab but in jeans and plaid.
My hands are starting to show signs of wrinkles but I like my hands. Lately my thumbs ache so much all the time that I try to not think about my hands. I am convinced that I will be crippled with arthritis and unable to use my hands when I am older - how much older? I think about playing the piano when I look at my hands. It is the grace and the beauty of the music they can create (trust me I am not that good) that elevated my hands into a better place. The ability to touch and feel, brushing my fingers through a loved ones hair, running them across someone's skin, the ability to type all these things make the hands almost the coolest part of the body. What if I really do lose function of my hands? Why am I not working harder to get some sort of help with this constant pain that scares me? I think I just assume these pains are all normal part of the decay of the body.
I have my fathers face and neck which is not a good thing as it means I do not have a single chin, but I do not really have multiple chins either unless I squish my neck down which I think most people see multiple chins when they do that. It is kind of a loose chin that looks sloppy and on the verge of being a double chin. The same is for the eyes, as we always have multiple rings under our eyes no matter how much we sleep. When you are a little girl freckles on your face is so cute, but as I aged and wanted acceptance and to be seen as pretty freckles were something to hide under make up. Now the freckles seem to look like age spots and I cover them to make myself look younger but I am lazy enough that I rarely wear make up so we have kind of come to terms with each other. I used to get comments about my beautiful eyes when I was a child and since then the color seems to have faded. I miss it actually as it was one of the few things that I thought made me special or even pretty - but just the eyes not the rest. My eyes are now a dull average blue gray that makes no real impression and that breaks my heart.
My hair is fine and thinning. Every girl wants long beautiful thick hair as they will tell you all men think that is the definition of a pretty girl. I know I used "all" and I know there are exceptions but really for the most part I think it is true. I had a miscarriage in my 20s that left me almost bald, my father asked me at dinner once if I realized I had a bald spot and with horror I said yes I know. He was shocked that I did not try harder to cover it up but other than wear a hat 24x7 there wasn't much I could do. Since then if I am under stress or physically having troubles with my thyroid or just health in general my hair is the first to abandon ship. I wish I could wear one of those haircuts that were really short but my head and face and even my hair just cannot carry it off well. Even my skull is strange as I have all these bumps and angles that are not natural for a head. I have never asked but I get the sense I was yanked out of my mother with forceps and must have gotten stuck and wrenched out leaving me with a very awkward skull. Can a skull be awkward?
My heart is strong, my lungs are strong, my bones are strong and I am very fortunate that most of me works just like it should. My thyroid was radioactively treated and now I wonder what state it is in. Do I really need my daily medicine? What harm has it caused in my body? I do not feed my body well and my stomach suffers from that the most - other than the weight I put on. I am often suffering from an upset or painful acid stomach. My liver is probably in deep trouble too. I know that the stress has me clench my jaw and my hands at night when I sleep but that is something deep inside me that has always been. My teeth are a diaster and always have been, they feel weak but maybe it is from all the hours of grinding? My senses are holding up for the most part. My hearing is as good as I pay attention and my smell has never been all that but it works fine. My eyes are starting to fail me as I lose my able to see far. I have started wearing my glasses again and am amazed at how much I had been comfortable with not seeing. I had let this vaseline gloss land over my world and it never really bothered me. I find seeing everything in the world both interesting and exhausting.
So in review, my body is amazingly strong and healthy. I am overweight and I can see the impact of it on every part of me. I am fading a bit as my body begins its decay and there is no real stopping it. This disassociation with my body however has made me complacent about some of the things I could probably make better or last longer. I can feel the shame as I look and think about my body and it is hard not to notice the disdain and disapproval I have as I look at the thing that is myself. It is time to appreciate the wonderful things my body lets me do and work on making the awkward, painful and uncomfortable things better. The pain of the decay and impermanence does not need to lead to a premature loss of my self.
Where did I live my mind, body or both? A question asked by the Week Of Inward Looking started by Susan Piver and Patti Digh. It is an exercise looking at the past year with 7 thought leaders, 7 questions in 7 days. The whole question was actually:
Where have I learned and lived in 2012? In my head, in my body, or both? What would living more fully in my body in 2013 bring to me? How can I embody life and learning as I move through this liminal space between now and next? How can I more fully learn from the neck down in 2013
Ok, so I am a thinker and I love to think. I even think about thinking with regular glee. I have never felt comfortable in my own skin, and have always existed in my head. I am clumsy, inflexible with almost no athletic talent at all and avoid looking or thinking about this strange vessel that carries me around. The other day I was at yoga and looking at my feet. I thought to myself - how long has it been since I actually looked at my feet? The key part of that sentence though is actually that I was at a yoga class. I have started to see the mind, body and heart connection. I add the heart to the body because I have realized that being physically engaged with yourself actually helps feel open with other people - at least for me. Perhaps it is just unlocking myself from the mind cave and realizing that my thoughts are not all that defines me.
I am terrible body landlord. I have fought tooth and nail to not know about its existence and necessity and berate myself for my body being incompetent and incapable. It would break my heart to hear anyone talk to another human being the way I talk to myself and especially when talking about my body. The divide between myself is like an epic battle that only I can see happening, imaginary friends at war. I really want to be a total yogini: Skinny, Flexible, Graceful, Strong. I also do not want to be anything like that as I am terrified of the embarrassment, pain and shame of trying to get from where I am to anywhere near "yogini-ness." My mind has wrapped a tight little cocoon of safety around me that the idea of failure or physical exhaustion or pain would be the end - my demise. My mind wooes me with wine, food, pajamas, and everything that keeps me safe, warm and protected.
However there have been moments, where I have seen the light through the thick cocoon. While I wobbled, struggled to keep up, sweat, swore, and managed to not just run out of the room screaming, I have survived to live another day. More powerful than the fact that I did not spontaneously combust upon first sign of failure or get ejected out of the room with everyone laughing at me, it the feeling afterwards when success or failure it is done. Afterwards my heart feels full, elated and alive and that can sometimes feels just as scary as the fear of failure. Too elated, too hyped up, wow I am going to be so awesome - I go from not dying right into an intense overdrive of rockstar mode. I move the bar of survivable failure so I am destined to keep struggling to just believe I can do it. My mind is a dirty fighter as I am sure that is against the rules, I should be thrilled about the progress I make but instead I feel disgusted that I am not a master and never will be. My heart shrinks back, my fear takes over and I have run away from the potential of a cease fire and a life outside the cocoon.
This year was particularly one that was owned by my mind. While I have fought with this yo-yo affect my whole life I feel like through my meditation practice I have a language around what is happening. I have to take this new found awareness sprinkle in some intention, wisdom and compassion and find myself a way to just be who I am - body, heart and mind.
Always a struggle for me to write, perhaps someday it will become more fluid and not so arduous and scary to start. As I read comments on articles and posts and see how judgmental and cruel people can be it makes this whole public blog thing much more difficult. Why do I have a public blog and not private one? I tell myself that no one is really reading this and I am pretty uninteresting so it will not really matter to anyone out there. I also pretend it is about technology and the ability to develop my own voice but I could do all that and not publish a single post. There is something about making the decision to put words and thoughts out there that is both frightening and curious. There is something about opening and sharing with the world at play with all of this.
Artist Thomas Sheridan
This weekend I went to an incredible yoga program The Intention of the Heart Practice for the Spiritual Warrior with Amy Sullivan. I am disappointed I did not go to the Fire part of the program because I can only imagine how powerful the two days together would have been. It was a beautifully lead afternoon that had us connect with our heart and thinking about our intentions using the body and journaling. Right now, I am all about trying to get to my heart and set intentions that are true to me instead of just required or goals. What is an intention versus a goal? For me, the difference is the heart and the outcome. I have spent year after year setting goals to accomplish for the next year. Marathon, Learn to Swim, Open Water swimming, all checks. I push myself each year to do something that is hard or will make me a "better" person. This person is never enough and needs to keep growing and accomplishing. This year I started with many goals but I lost the passion for them. I could not see the point of accomplishing these things that in the end do not matter to anyone but me and I did not really care. Nihilism was running rampant in my mind and my life.
However this year I did do a few things that were kind of out of character for me. I signed up for both an IDP Teacher training and Stanford Compassion teacher training with absolutely no idea what would become of it. An activity with no known goal. I have nothing in my current life that can absorb those things easily but yet I felt compelled to do it. It has been hard because I feel so out of place compared to my fellow students. (Compared is a big problem in that sentence but I am working on that too.) IDP program changed my life, but was not an easy peasy change that suddenly made everything better. It made me aware of my nihilism, aware of my heart, aware of a strong desire in me to live a meaningful life. All that awareness is actually crazy painful because there is no longer the ability to be numb without knowing I am trying to numb myself. It is so difficult to crave human connection and the ability to share my heart with others and that they are open-hearted with me. Vulnerable. Exposed. Longing. Now - all I have is now.
The questions in my head for 2013 are
Who do I want to be in this world?
What type of communication and intimacy do I want in my life?
What can I do to make this a better world?
How do I spend my time to live a life that fulfills my intention?
How can I face my demons and keep my intention strong?
They are big questions but I have one life and each moment of time is an opportunity to relieve suffering and bring peace and joy to the world.
I want to write which I think is why this is so hard to do. I have been unable to be with myself ...just in the space of being...for some time now. I have been so afraid to exist, afraid of my very existence, so much so that most nights I have drank myself to sleep to run from the fear of what might happen if -- not sure what the if was but terrifying all the same. There was no relief to be had and every night led to more anxiety that I would somehow perish if I ever felt what was below the surface - if the wall fell down...so would I. Tonight some how there was a crack in the pain and some light found its way into my heart and here I sit sober with myself breathing in the anxiety, the fear and the joy of living all at the same time. I have hope I can find my way back in my own life.
As I have been thinking about my engagement of my own life, I have used the analogy of a movie. I am one of those that hides their eyes in fear and cries when my heart strings have been tugged, basically I lose track of the fact that it is a story that has been carefully scripted and edited and fall into the storyline completely and with total abandon. I am more comfortable losing myself in a movie than I am in my own life. I try so desperately to block and numb the feelings that I have in response to real things in my life dressing them down and deeming them unworthy. I have been running hard and fast from my feelings my whole life which is exhausting and cruel to my very being. I wonder how it all spun out of control and I realized it started as a low moan of angst about the meaning of my life and turned into a screaming wail when my father destroyed his own life and then killed himself. The walls that I felt I had to erect to stay alive were soul crushing. In matters of moments of a few breaths I became lost to myself and my life as I was ill prepared to deal with the level of strong emotions and despair.
Tonight I had an opportunity to share time with my sons and their girlfriends and I saw that they radiated joy. Their lives are not perfect and will not always be happy but they know joy and for that I am thankful as it is a real blessing. We saw a movie tonight and it was gorgeous, full of passion and adventure and there were definitely moments where I was swept away. However tonight there were also a few moments where I revelled in the world that was able to be created so magically in this film. A story with heart and heros, courage and fear and for a moment I could see the world and my own life as just as magical. I thought about the pain and suffering I am feeling and realized I have felt this type of pain before if not more so, what could have changed and why now was it so devastating The thing they do not warn you about when you delve into meditation is that once you have awareness and your heart starts to open to the interconnectedness of the world, you cannot go back. You are left vulnerable where the old patterns and walls feel more like prison than they do salvation. I know my life must have meaning beyond the numbness and heartless world. I know I must help others in the world to be free from their suffering just like me we all want joy and peace. All any of us can do is to try each moment of each day.
The glory of the internet is to be able to turn over stones that before were unavailable, inaccessible, unrealizable before and with a single search and a few clicks there you are. Staring at pictures from the family that discarded you, found you unacceptable, and told you to stay away. They look so happy, in fact, they look like an incredibly normal family. My brother looks like my father and my mother looks so much the same even though it has been over 20 years since I laid eyes on her. My father has been gone for a year and I was not even mentioned on his obituary as part of the family, which is right because I was disowned and removed from the family so long ago. For a few minutes, I cannot breathe. There is a moment of clarity and awareness that feels as unreal as it does true; everything I work so hard to do is for them and everything I run from is running from them. While that specifically may not be true, I can feel that my heart that has never survived the trauma of my childhood. Fragile and wounded, I came to that family damaged and they did not understand what they had taken on and created deeper wounds of rejection and fear and nothing ever healed. I have always been proud of how I have survived the insanity in my life and at this very moment I realize survival is not living life.
In the wake of my biological father's horrendous death, I am faced to force that the demons that we have inside us must be healed or they will continue to haunt and taint the life that we try to live. Faced with normalcy and a seemingly happy future, he felt compelled to destroy his life and leave himself with no choices but to take his own life. Am I really living any differently? The destruction I lay upon myself is self-hatred and doubt, unworthiness and an emotionally stunted heart and relationships. I spent so many years surviving, fighting for my life that in the wake of the new solitude and the emptiness I am lost. I named this blog Courage to Be and I am still struggling to find the courage and the heart to really live. I am not sure what it even really means to look beyond the limited and find the spacious luminosity of life.
I have depended on self-reliant untouchable strong me that I loath and continually am disappointed in for so long that I am starting to think that this self definition of myself is the thing I have to let go. The wounds are kept alive by the solidification of the need to stay deeply protected and the fear of what lies beyond. I have to let that me retire from vigilance and protection and then what? Open up - open up to what? What the hell is the point of life beyond surviving? What do you do with the space and emptiness? How can I let go of the me I think I am and let myself be the me I am? What if real me comes out and it is an even worse version of myself than I have imagined. If I do not meet my demons at the door, will they take over my life and destroy everything I have because I can not move forward? What if there is no heart, no courage, even worse what it there is nothing to who I am other than just survival jane mode? I am so afraid and yet I feel like maybe there is hope a glimmer of love? Can I re-engage with my life that is not about necessity and is about living? What does that even mean?
There is something between my brain and words being written down that changes the tone, the space even my perceived brilliance of my thoughts. It has been almost a year since I last wrote in this blog, I even started another one but continued to get lost between my thoughts and the typing. It is time to renew the effort once again. The first of these will be difficult, rusty, awkward to produce and there will be no room for grammar or correct sentences just a reopening of my self to myself.
Reading a page from my childhood journal or an entry the last year of this blog and I am haunted by the ghost of unrealized intention. I am struck by the same themes over and over again without any new insight and progress. As my life has evolved I find myself obsessed with the same base desires: eating better, losing weight, exercise, creativity; freedom from the me I do not want to be. Over the last year I have been looking at the gap between feeling and doing and I realize that I have not delved deeper to understand what is the core fear and part of me that both wants these changes and yet cannot commit to them. There must be something below the surface of my mind - my self - that is heavily vested in keeping me in this hamster wheel of suffering of wanting and failing. Is there a part of me struggling for its life - fearing annihilation - if I move beyond the me that fails that struggles that desires to break free? Is there a part of me that has no desire to be anything other than what I am? Why of all the things in this world to want and desire have these simple things been the focus of my emotional distress?
What does that freedom from this vicious circle look like? Can I imagine a me that is not beating herself up about eating right, or cringing at every picture because I am so overweight after all these years of the same brutality? What about a me that has enough space that a creativity creeps into my world allowing me to share with the world more of me? What about a me that is free from the shame and disgust in my inability to move forward? Can I be kind to myself and still not abuse myself? Well this is the journey that I am embarking on.. to realize that the me right now is all I have and the decision the moments in this day - not the last or not the future but this day is all that I am.
My heart is shaky and my mind is cruel. I am lost within my own construct of confusion, pain and disappointment. Losing steam or interest or care for where I go next. Lost not wanting to be found. This is all in my mind. None of it real. and yet I feel weighed down and caught in this web and despair. Breathe. Breathe. Another moment passes. Breathe Breathe. Right now notice the cool breeze from the window. The sun shining in my eye. The cat perched watching me watch him. This is the reality. Still here. Breathe. Breathe. Tears stuck inside me. Anger lost its voice and is swallowed whole into the hollowness. Breathe. I can feel my heel pressed against the table, my back sunk into the couch. I hear the cars drive by the house. I do not feel here. I am here but lost to the now. Breathe damn it Breathe. Feel the warmth of the sunbeam on my leg. Stop screaming. My thoughts are empty and yet pregnant with guilt and frustration. breathe. please just breathe. for a moment or two I am here. for a moment or two I see what I do to myself. the rest of the time I am too busy trying to survive. breathe. breathe.
January 2, 2012. It feels like the future as I remember Y2K like it was yesterday and was 12 years ago. My sons are both adults (well sort of) and my life has really transformed from where I was and where I am now. Time is a really strange thing - some days seems to crawl by and yet years are flying. I am trying to come into this year fully aware and not making excuses.
I have stopped drinking. I do not think I am an alcoholic in the true sense of the word, but I do use alcohol to avoid the things I really need and want to do. Want is a strong word as I don't really want to exercise and eat right. I really want to eat whatever the hell I want and never lift my ass of the couch, but I don't want to have a muffin top and thigh burn. Funny I have to do something I dont want to do either way and I would rather not be disgusted with myself. Alcohol lets me eat more and exercise less and drown the guilt away of both. So in a sense I am an alcoholic because I am using it against myself. I wish I could drink once in a while but it is like the exercise thing - the day I miss one day - is the day I never start up again. There is something crazy about me that will just hold on to the failure and keep the streak going rather than rise up and start again.
If you have known me or read my blog or anything I have written in the last 10 years - these are not really new thoughts. The desire to break out of bad patterns has been there since - well since I able to reflect on myself. I have see-saw'd on weight and motivation my whole life Sometimes I am successful and then I just erode at my success until I am so far gone I have to punch myself in the face to get back somewhere in the middle. This is the year of the punch in the face. I am working on my Shambhala Warrior Path program, applied to the IDP Meditation Facilitator training, looking at getting started on a master's degree in counseling, volunteering more - maybe a big sister or another program. This is the year without a doubt that I will reclaim my true focus and goals. 2011 was disappointing. I got no where fast. I don't want to walk into another year feeling this way. Now I just have to keep the energy and motivation up.
