The Ego Giveth, The Ego Taketh Away March 20, 2009

Being human is just so darn funny sometimes.  I gave C my key, which after 6+ months and having a key under my welcome mat (yes, I am a living cliche) of which she was aware the entire time, I figured no big deal, right? Ha!  Not in my disease-addled brain.  Pretty much from the minute I casually handed it over, I started looking for reasons why she wasn’t good enough for me.  And, as my therapist has pointed out on many occasions, I could find something to pick on about anyone.  George Clooney – couldn’t you just stop being such a prankster for once?  Mother Teresa – that burlap really doesn’t do anything for your complexion.  I know, I know, but in the moment it all feels so fucking real – the committee is saying the same stuff I pull out every goddamn time I’m feeling threatened, and we all know the power of sirens…like a zombie, I return, repeating “she’s not worthy, she’s not worthy…”

Thankfully I have a sponsor whom I believe in and whose relationship I respect, so when she tells me it’s my disease picking the fight, I listen.  And then something magical happens – I find out she’s right, and get to see my own part in the drama.  And that’s always the biggest relief, honestly, to find out it’s not her, but me; that I can’t control what she says but I can control my attitude about it, where I decide to take it.  I am a verbal snob, ridiculously nimble on my conversational feet.  If I have to choose between someone who is loving and grounded and communicative versus someone whose energies go into being a good sparring partner, I’ll gladly take the former, and besides, it’s not a Chinese menu, I’ll take one from column a and one from column b and in neat little containers with a set of chopsticks comes my perfect mate.

I just wrote to an old friend that there is good awaiting us of which we cannot even conceive because we don’t yet have a template for it.  If most of what I got as a youngster was criticism, anger, and volatility, how can I possibly conceive of a different model on my own?  We have to be shown new ways in order to live them ourselves.  That’s where other people come in, where the growth potential is infinite depending on who we choose to walk with.  Someone in one of my meetings said that perception is merely evidence-gathering for our own beliefs, and I think that’s so profound: we don’t see reality as it is, we see reality as we are.  We notice what stands out to us, and what stands out does so because of our own histories, because of what has been made apparent or familiar to us.  So the trick is to get that shaken up a bit, but in a good way.  The trick is to step out of one’s comfort zone, but in a healthy direction.   Therapy can do that if it’s really good, and 12-step meetings can because people share their experience, strength and hope through incredible adversities, and because they don’t judge one another for the lessons that get us there.  The other day, someone in an open AA meeting was counting days, and he had 6.  6 days of sobriety, and when he said it out loud, everyone clapped loudly.  No blame.  No finger-pointing.  Just welcome back, you’re in the right place, the prodigal son returns.

What I vigorously don’t believe is that we can do it alone.  With only my brain, I can only think my thoughts, through the filters of my experience.  That limits me tremendously.  I realize meditation can serve as a channel to something higher, but if my translator isn’t familiar with the language, I’m not going to hear it or understand.  So I keep coming back.  To meetings, to my sponsor, to my girlfriend, to sources of wisdom I believe have been placed in my path as loudspeakers for the messages I need to hear.  My job is to remain open to them, but the rest comes from humility and connection.

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There March 4, 2009

I think self-care is a foreign concept to many of us – certainly its unfamiliarity is pretty much a prequalification for being an Al-Anon member.  Learning how to be still in one’s own head, learning how to be comfortable in one’s own skin without constantly looking around for some kind of validation, without a touchstone that dictates how we’re supposed to feel, think, act is revolutionary and at times outrageously, squirmingly uncomfortable.  I’m finally here, home, by myself, after a week of busy-ness to rival my mother’s.  She was part of that insane agenda: I worked from the city Wednesday through Friday, stating so early and ending so late there was no way I was going to make the 1.5 hour drive back and forth to my farmhouse each time, so I asked my mother if I could stay in her extra apartment.  When she agreed, it felt ridiculous and rude not to see her, so we managed to find a half hour at 9pm on Thursday in which to catch up a bit about our lives.  When she left, I tried to go to sleep but my heart was pumping so hard I could feel the blood rushing in  my ears.  Like a crisis had been averted through which I’d remained calm, and now I could feel all the attendant feelings, all the panic and “what-if”s of narrowly-missed disaster.

Writing in this calms me – I think it’s a method of self-care, to just put my unedited feelings down, feeling the clickyness of this little machine beneath my fingertips (my new Samsung NC10, by the way, which I think I like very much), tap-tapping my way back to a sense of calm.  Learning how to sit still, how not to quell the panic with still more activity and more interaction, is most definitely the key to self-care for me – going back to my last post, if I know that in the end, food, chocolate, retail therapy and sex aren’t ultimately going to soothe my anxious beast, I need to do the very thing that causes so much of the anxiety in the first place: stay and endure.  Stand still.  Don’t worry about looking pretty.  Just stay.  Breathe, and stay.

Piss and Vinegar February 24, 2009

I’m full of both today.  What sucks about wisdom/insight is that, once you have it, you can’t really ignore it or pretend you don’t know about it.  Yestarday was a really tough day for me emotionally, which is generally what makes it hard physically if it’s going to be, and at the end of it I was getting hungry and decided I was going to take myself out to dinner.  Nice gesture, but I’m sitting in my therapy session, literally fantasizing about this meal I’m going to have – I find myself weaving in and out of conversation presence as I’m thinking about panchan, and squid in hot pepper sauce, how it’s going to look when they bring it to the table, and am I really going to go to Han Bat or should I try someplace closer even if I’m not as familiar with it? I brought myself back enough for the session to be somewhat productive, but when I did finally get to the restaurant and the food was brought to my table, I realized something.  This food, no matter how perfect, how delicious, was absolutely not going to sate the hunger going on inside me, and for that reason I knew I’d likely overeat and then feel all full of self-loathing and shame for my distended belly and my percieved lack of will power.  I’m reading Caroline Knapp’s “Appetites: What Women Want” and hope to hear further insights from her on this issue, but it was a major epiphany for me right there in the moment to realize my efforts to anaesthetize with food, with anything external for that matter, but particularly with food.  I’ve been using it to those attempted ends probably since I hit puberty, so I don’t know why at this moment it became so clear to me – no different than the cigarette someone smokes or the slug from a drink someone takes right after a stressful event.

So here I am, left with the knowledge that no retail therapy, no imbibed or consumed substance is going to help me with my current inner state of teeth-gnashing.  So what do I do?  Sit in the discomfort?  Know that this too shall pass and bide my time?  I’m attending Al-Anon meetings though maybe not as many as I should, and I’m aware life is a little stressful now for a combination of reasons so banal as to really be unworth the document space to list.  When we realize we need to turn to something not on the outside, is that when we look deeper for something on the inside?  Is that where prayer and meditation come in?

Love Heals December 29, 2008

If I could convey one message in the span of my life, it would be that.  Love heals.  it is the safety net that catches me when I try something new; it is the launchpad from which I grow and experiment and ultimately, seemingly, take off for heretofore uncharted and unimagined destinations.  It’s been over 8 months since my last post, and having now read them over, I cannot believe how far my life has come in that time.

The Quell of Loneliness (get it?) February 29, 2008

Someone whose blog I liked very much has deleted it.  My head spins – why?  Where did she go?  Away from potentially critical, questioning readers?  She’d been miserable in her marriage and in relationships in general, started on a journey of self-discovery, and then met a man via this medium whom she decided was the answer to all her questions.  Many people congratulated her and wished her luck, but one or two cautioned her that she seemed to be repeating history.  I guess my fantasy is that she didn’t particularly want to hear the naysayers, wanted to remain blissfully ignorant and throw herself into the (unquestionable) joy of the beginning of a relationship without the buzzkill of cautionary tales.  And maybe she will, in fact, be blissfully happy.  Maybe for some, it’s possible to change a tune without learning a different instrument.  I’m probably jealous, more than anything.  Yes, I want what my higher power wants for me, blah, blah, blah, but I’d also like someone besides my sponsor (though she’s been right so far about everything else) to tell me that life will keep getting better and that I absolutely, positively will meet someone and be capable of a loving relationship.  Because most of the time, I honestly don’t believe it.

Being with my mother and the goddamn Blackberry that’s surgically attached to her thumbs for twelve days didn’t help matters any, to be sure.  I’ve never been so lonely in someone else’s company, yet here I am, sitting next to her, seeing the world and dying to talk to someone about all of it.  We might as well have been driving through Elizabeth, NJ for all she paid attention, yet we were driving through the streets of Mumbai and Manila, past local culture and sights unseen.  For sure, my recent ease in my own company helped me tremendously, but it was still incredibly lonely.  It made me miss B: suddenly I’m back to looking for her on Facebook, Googling her…someone with her name, living in her area, won honorable mention in a squash cooking contest.  A f–king squash cooking contest?  All she could cook when we were together was macaroni and cheese from a box and fried eggs.  So I start wandering down the road of “has she grown up?,” “should I contact her?”  Yuck, yuck, and yuck.  At least I know better than to listen to myself at this moment.  It’s just little drops of the drug, still stored in my veins somewhere, come out to haunt me.

One thing I WON’T do to quell this loneliness is sleep with boy C again.  All it did was make me miss women even more than I already did.  How do straight women deal with 5-o’clock-shadow-burn?  Or with all that hair?  If only I felt as much of an ease flirting with women as I do with men, I’d at least find someone to sleep with.  But that probably isn’t the answer, either.  I need to get back into my groove, to fill the emptiness myself.  I need to do what I think – correctly or not – my blogger-in-absentia was unable to do, to become truly at ease in my own company so that being with someone else never again has to mean abandoning a part of myself.  It’s a wonder I’m not emotional cheesecloth after being with my mother for twelve days: let me give myself the time to return to my former level of contentment before I start making any big decisions.

Journeys February 14, 2008

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days, and while I want very much to recount some of what went on, I’m also in a first-class lounge in London, on the first leg of my trip with my mom, and part of me just wants to be in the moment.

But some stuff happened that I think is important to document here.  C spent the night on Tues. night, as much due to the weather as any sort of lukewarm desire on my part.  The first time we had sex, I think my body was so hungry for touch that it could have been nearly anyone stroking my skin and I would have responded.  But the second time (Tues night), my head just wouldn’t shut up: I didn’t want to explore his body, didn’t particularly like the way he was touching me (it wasn’t bad, but it would have required a fair amount of coaching to be orgasmically effective), didn’t get very wet, and had a tough time staying present.  The wonderful thing, though, was how it made me realize that whether I’m lesbian or not (I’m not questioning that, per se, it’s just not the point here) I so-o-o-o-o do not want to be in a relationship right now, with anyone except me.  This new comfort in my own skin has been so hard-won, and now there are guards at the gate, making sure no one gets through.  He could have been my dream partner (he isn’t, but he’s lovely and kind), and I still wouldn’t be ready.  We talked about all of this, and he was extremely understanding, and we left on very good terms – I will look forward to seeing him again.  I’m just relieved to have given myself the space to figure out how I feel, and to have discovered this.

So, I’m on this trip with my mom, which in itself is an incredible statement, as I swore many years ago I’d never travel with her again.  One of the most helpful teachings for me in Al-Anon is how to recognize that people are not extensions of or reflections on me – I can like or not like her behavior, but unless it is directed at or involves me in some way, I can detach with love and just see her for who she is.  She’s being very solicitous so far, and we’ve mostly been reading or sleeping, and my excitement about traveling trumps any trepidations I might be having.  It’s exciting to be in the London airport, where B and I were just a few months back, and to be in such an incredibly different, far stronger place.  I’m happy, grounded, in touch with myself, and I look forward to remaining that way as much as I’m able, while eating great food and taking as many pictures as I can.

On My Way January 22, 2008

I’m not sure I was all that clear yesterday about the “clap on, clap off” reference, and it’s something I’m still grappling with today. Part of what is happening to me thanks to Al-Anon, therapy, and my own unstinting desire to heal is that I’m starting to recognize that the way I see the world changes completely depending on the frame of mind I’m in, and that frame of mind can “snap” back into place in an instant. Being around my family brings up such negative, old shit for me, but I have another understanding of myself now that I didn’t have as a teenager: back then I knew I wasn’t the sullen, selfish, angry girl my family made me out to be – the trouble was, I didn’t know what I was.

I’ll admit with only shreds of embarrassment (such a useless emotion, really) that I’ve been watching “Star Trek: Voyager” for the past few weeks: it started from the very beginning of the series, and it’s been interesting to see how the crew’s personalities evolved. Oh god, I really can’t believe I wrote that. At any rate, Kate Mulgrew is the captain, and she is so filled with wonder, and yet also able to be commanding and authoritative, and it made me think about how I used to be. Even now, the first sip of really good eggnog, the first bite of fresh summer corn, the chill of autumn on my cheeks when the rest of me is warm in soft clothing – little things can bring such wonderment to me. When I was younger – a teenager but away from home – that wonderment brought on a surge of happiness so great I’d have to skip or jump or hug someone. And I’d cry, too, with the depth of my sadness for certain moments – I remember going to see “Less than Zero” with my first girlfriend and her brother, and tears just streaming down my face at one point. I felt things so very, very deeply. I want to believe that part of the “me” I’m becoming is a returning to that depth of feeling, of uninhibited sensual enjoyment. I don’t think I feel deadened inside, but some of the wonder is gone…maybe that’s inevitable?

So now I’m beginning to see that when the world feels wearisome and predictable, when I feel aimless and passionless, that’s the default, old place I can go to. But within minutes of doing something “esteemable,” as my therapist likes to say – be that making my bed with clean sheets, or cleaning up the kitchen, or paying bills or returning a phone call – I come back to this even contentment with my life. I’ve “clapped off” the light that makes everything look dull, or maybe I’ve “clapped on” a brighter one. Al-Anon is about learning how to live a drama-free, crisis-free life: it’s very Buddhist, really, very focused on learning how not to run away from myself by diving into other people’s problems, or worrying about what their issue with me might be. Live and let live.

I don’t know how to lead a healthy, balanced life, but I know I’m on my way to learning.  And staying single, living away from the city, and surrounding myself with healthy, honest, loving relationships are all invaluable in helping me walk this path.

Happy New Year? January 1, 2008

It’s early, way early for having finally fallen asleep around 2am. I didn’t even think I’d make it to midnight, but there’s some fight in the old girl yet.  I’m debating whether or not to get back into bed – on one hand it feels very decadent, on the other it depresses the hell out of me. Do you ever not know which “voice” to trust? The one that beckons soothingly, almost seductively that I’m tired, wouldn’t getting back into bed feel so good? Reading a book and falling back to sleep? Versus the voice that says you know what path that leads down, and it’s often not pretty, so why don’t you get up and be productive and shake whatever last cobwebs of sadness or melancholy are curtaining your mind. But then, it’s my mom who always needed to be productive, who told me my ass wasn’t going to get any smaller by keeping my nose in a book, and I can pretty much do whatever I damn please because I’m a full-fledged grown-up now. So it’s back, then, to Elizabeth Gilbert’s question as the mantra for my days: what do I really, really, really want?

I wanted an e-mail from B to be waiting for me this morning. Yuck, but it’s true. I don’t know what I’d have done with it, but I wanted it there, forcing my hand. I almost wrote her yesterday. My sponsor and I were doing part of the 4th step and talking about love, and she said that she thought I’d very much been in love with B, and she with me, but that in choosing her, I’d gone as far as I could go without making some major transformations in myself. I hit a bottom in our breakup the likes of which I’ve never seen and hope never to have to see again. I may actually have to go get “Eat, Pray, Love” and quote directly from it, because much to my then-splintered heart’s relief, I think she captured what happened to me.

“a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it” (p.149).

That’s what she did to me, for me. And I almost wrote her to say thank you, that I’m okay, even better than okay, and that I was grateful she had been the best I could do for myself with the tools that I had at the time. She “broke my heart open so new light could get in, made me so desperate and out of control that I had to transform my life” (ibid). She made me feel what it felt like to be truly seen and truly loved.

But I didn’t write her, and she didn’t write me, and that may just be how it is for awhile. I’m 99% sure we’re not going to be together again – have you ever been with someone where the feel of their name in your mouth just wasn’t natural, and it made you think “how could I be with this person in the long term if saying their name doesn’t feel right to me?” Am I nuts? But her name never felt right in my mouth.

And now, I am learning what it means to love and be loved, to love myself without exception, to see that the moments when I feel nerdy or loser-y or alone are not really me, just some old records with really deep grooves. I am learning to be alone and not lonely…in her blog “And the Damage Done,” the writer speaks of how being alone may be the way to discover who we truly are, but fears we may not know that before we’re in our 60s or 70s, and then what? I don’t believe that’s true. I think life is a journey and that each person who enters it in some significant way is here to teach us more about ourselves that we could not learn in the absence of that outside influence, but that there is a point when the work pays off enough to start bringing more positive people into our lives. I’m learning so incredibly much about myself, about how loving through joking sarcasm still slices and puts me on guard, about how full of light I feel when I am able to express my true feelings and be myself without thinking.

I saw Chris Noth in a Starbuck’s on 8th Street the week before last. The reason I’m bringing it up here is that his dark eyes made me swoon, regardless of the body that came along with them – B had very blue eyes, and while I grew to love them (and I am a major sucker for crow’s feet, which she had as much from smiling all the time as from 20 years of smoking), I fall into warm, brown eyes much, much more deeply. My girlfriend before B, C (I’m not kidding) had brown eyes, but they were cold somehow – not lifeless, but not expressive most of the time, either. Like her. So brown is good but warmth is better. Anyway, Chris was much better looking in person than I’d have anticipated: quite tall, casually but nattily dressed, and really, such huge, dark eyes. Yum.

So yes, I think, Happy New Year to all. If nothing else, it marks the start of a new year in which anything at all can happen. At this time last year, I’d never have predicted I’d be here now, so who in God’s name knows where the next 364 days will take me. But life is good. Still hard, but good. No regrets.

Moody is My Middle Name December 20, 2007

One thing being in this particular 12-step program is teaching me is to be constantly aware of all that I’m grateful for. That especially during times when I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed or just unbelievably cranky, the thing to do is to start reciting a spur-of-the-moment gratitude list, even using the alphabet if that gets me started (not being grateful for the alphabet, but thinking of something that starts with A and getting as far as I can). I’ve written about this before, but mornings can be really hard for me, and even if the day before had tons of high points, it’s no security against waking up agitated and overwhelmed again the following morning.

So this morning I beat it back by doing “esteemable” things – I made my bed, straightened the kitchen (it’s fucking incredible to me how instantaneously cluttered my kitchen can become, especially right after it’s been cleaned. It’s only a matter of hours before I spill something on the floor, or leave mail strewn across the counter, and the whole thing looks just like it did the day before), and baked some concoction that started with a Betty Crocker spice cake mix but then included amaranth (my new favorite ingredient), protein powder, and some other creative licenses. I’m tempted to go get a piece and see how it turned out…talk about interactive blogging – I’ll be right back…

Yumalicious. Big, fat, happy, yum. I am by no means a health-food person, and I only eat what tastes good to me, but this amaranth stuff, it’s just so cool – it’s supposedly the most complete protein in existence in the plant world, and it’s crunchy like roughly-milled cornmeal so whatever you add it to just has this little crunch to it, with no real change in taste, but with every crunch you’re reminded that you’re eating something with extra protein (even if it is a Betty Crocker cake mix at heart). Ode to amaranth.

I don’t really mind being single. It’s infinitely less complicated than being in a relationship, and after stumbling upon the mediocrely-written but still very hot imho “Insatiable Desires” blog, I had a whale of a masturbation session that left me giggling and breathless, so it’s not entirely celibate, either.  Much of the time, I really like my own company, and when I don’t, I pick up the phone or get in my car or turn on the TV.  I lead a very, very good life – I think I’m immeasurably lucky for a 37-year old, in terms of my self-awareness, my level of relative peace, and my success, both financial and professional.  Leaving NYC has helped me find a balance – it’s made me less materialistic, less time-crunching, less hostile.  Not that I’m a hostile person – I’m almost unrelentingly sparkly, actually, but getting bumped by crowds and treated rudely by store staff and seeing what the combination of overcrowding, materialism and anonymity does to people’s manners short-circuits my affability in a flash.  Up here, people truly are kinder, take more time to help one another, and it seems everyone really does smile more.

Whether it’s Buddhist or 12-step-based, the key is to not lose one’s peace of mind even in the face of life’s curve balls.  Because there will forever be curve balls.

Morning Pages, Day 1 December 9, 2007

It says something, though I don’t know what, that I’ve been looking forward to writing this morning.  I think, actually, that I’m routine-phobic or -averse, so right now this is new and different, and the shine may wear off sooner rather than later.  But for now it has me writing and hedging for time alone, and that in itself is a success.  Have I mentioned I can’t touch type?  I know where all the keys are, but I still hunt and peck with two or three fingers, which if I’m not looking down has a mediocre track record for accuracy.

what do I really, really, really want?  I want to end the class I’ve been teaching with grace and sincerity.  I want to be…ah, here’s a thing: I think I need to make sure the things I ask for are things I actually have some say in – I was going to say that I wanted to be a bit of a phenomenon in the school and be asked to revamp this class, but I have no control over the kinds of evaluations my students give me.  And that’s just where I could spend my time, too – on worrying that because I didn’t give someone a good grade on their midterm or because they for whatever reason don’t like me, they won’t evaluate me well.  At my core I am so truly convinced people will be cruel to me, will be threatened by me in some way nd actively try to thwart my success.  It’s my mother and junior high school all over again.  And again, and again.

That’s where this 12-step program comes in.  It’s been amazing, and it’s only been 7 months.  I was so completely derisive of 12-step programs before entering this one – I’d dabbled with OA in college and hated it – but there is such a gentleness and theme of radical, total self-acceptance to this program.  It’s like being introduced to my real self, and coming to realize that the derisive, self-destructive voices/beliefs are the disease. 

I got into this program simply because my relationship was falling apart, and our couple’s therapist suggested that I try it.  So I got into it to save us, and ended up getting dumped anyway 2 weeks later.  The relationship had made me into one of of those incredibly malleable pieces of wire, and I had taken my original shape and wrapped it around this woman, losing myself, making her feel trapped, and ultimately feeling completely hollowed-out when she left.  I was reading “Eat, Pray, Love” at the time, and thank God, because it said what I needed to hear: that this relationship would serve to crack my heart open and let some more light and air in, excruciating as the fault lines might be.  It was the most grief and pain I’ve ever experienced, though if I were to be totally honest, it wasn’t the first or even the second time I’ve felt eviscerated by a relationship ending: that had happened twice before, only I hadn’t really seen it as such at the time.  My pattern has either been to end up with women whom I feel in some way superior to (and eventually contemptuous of), or with women who are emotionally unavailable and leave me feeling at fault for the failure of the relationship.  The three in which I felt the latter all had periods of evisceration and devastation, only this time getting brought to my knees resulted in getting the help I needed in the form of this program and a therapist who is either in program herself or just incredibly program savvy/literate.  It was a gift, even though I still think about her every day, several times a day, and check my e-mail on a regular basis in hopes that I’ll hear from her.  I asked her not to contact me, so even if she wanted to I’m not sure she would, and I don’t really know what I would hope to gain from the contact: an apology?  Something that would confirm that I wasn’t completely to blame for the ending of the relationship?  I know that’s something I need to establish inside myself, and I do think there are parts of that relationship that were healthy and loving (or maybe unhealthy and loving?) that I am justified in missing.  What I don’t solidly, securely know yet is that I will meet someone with whom I will actually be happier than I was with…hmm, what shall we call her?  Crap, I hope I don’t spend 10 more minutes finding a name for her.  Names are hard, especially if I want to be even-handed in their significance.  Oy.  Forget it – it’ll come to me at some point.  At any rate, she’s who/what I have to reminisce about, and even though there were issues with our sex life, issues with our social life, and issues with our ability to communicate, her smile made my knees weak, she made me feel like the prettiest woman on the planet, and I loved her as well and hard as I’ve ever loved anyone.  Sigh.

How did I get there?  I know she’ll be coming up a lot and that’s fine, but letting her “rent space” in my head can be overwhelming sometimes.  Plus, the half-hour’s over, and it’s time to continue my day.  See you tomorrow.