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.

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.

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.

Clap on, Clap off January 21, 2008

I just returned from a family celebration, and I really thought I was fine, until I woke up this morning. Safely ensconced in the cocoon of my home, I guess it was finally okay to decompress, to feel all my feelings. I did that, as I often do, in the form of anxiety dreams, often about animals, and I awakened feeling glad I’d chosen to wear my mouth guard since I’m sure I spent the entire night grinding my teeth. My family makes me feel fat, out of place, lonely, muted, unattractive, badly dressed, generally ugly-duckling-ish. I know it’s their shit and has very little to do with me, but the attention and comments that come along when I’m at my slimmest versus when I’m filling out my jeans a bit more are astonishingly different. I didn’t think it was affecting me, but it was, and I was just working really hard to fend it off. and then my dreams tell me all about it.

But then I went to my computer this morning, and I truly wish I could remember what triggered it, but I suddenly started to feel like myself again, which now means lighter, happier, funnier, far more at ease with myself. Happy with myself. I’m excited to see the way my real self can click back in so quickly, and I can be aware of the chasm between this person and the one who has to truly struggle to be okay, who has to hear the Greek chorus of critical voices and fend them off. I’m home. I’m safe now. I won’t let those thoughts rule my head or my day, and I’ll take loving care of myself and be grateful for all that I have and the parts of me I’ve been able to discover, and I’ll remember that the path I’m on is one I love.

It just occurred to me that in the past, part of the reason I’ve wanted a girlfriend was to have her as a buffer against those feelings my family arouses. Now I’m learning how to be that buffer myself, and hopefully ultimately how to not internalize those feelings at all, just deflect them like Wonder Woman with her golden wrist cuffs. Kapow!