Facing fears
Pause before the great unravel
22 February 2012 10:33 AM
I’m in one of those simmering periods, one of those in-betweens, though in between what, exactly, I’m not sure. It’s not a bad feeling, though it is underwritten by a layer of apprehension. I can’t tell if the apprehension is in anticipation of something big, the feeling I get before the unexpected suddenly snaps into place, or if the apprehension is a bodily standard, a low warning of some small doom to come.
My heart drums it out. Maybe it has something to do with driving, some delayed coming-of-age reaction or the is the slow realization that perhaps this driving thing wasn’t such a big deal anyway. Maybe part of it is the memories of the high school years, somewhat neutralized and conquered, but still heavy. Maybe it’s the threads of everything overlapping and knotting and knit together. It’s a blurry mosaic; follow the twisted path from one knot to the next for the details, pull back for the whole tangled story. Sometimes it is overwhelming, too much to process. I look at the knots and tangles and want to turn away, to lie in the sun with my eyes closed and pretend I don’t have a mind, a heart, or a memory, but the action of driving, of taking a certain kind of responsibility, pulls at the knots anyway.
Everywhere I look, think, write, I come up with hearts. Not clichéd Valentine’s Day style hearts, all syrupy and scarlet or sickly pink, but the real thing, the muscle, the engine, the essential center, bloodied, battered, and strong. The heart doesn’t exist in isolation, it works in concert with the lungs and brain; it gets its nourishment from the outside world, but still (it’s no fool, this heart) works protected under a thick cage of bone. It is the arbiter of my mood, the barometer of what is going on in my body and deep in my mind, it connects me to you, to him, to her. The blood flows freely despite the knotted story line. My pulse is strong.
Still. I can tell it wants to pull me under, to give in to its dark side. Or does it? We sit on opposite sides of a poker table in a shadowy bar, cradled in a dim circle of light. Each of us holds a carefully guarded hand, and the heart, she knows how to bluff. Me? I learned how to play poker over thirty years ago and have forgotten everything I learned. Is she trying to trick me? Is she playing a joke? Does she want to lead me to a richer life, or is my heart just a drama queen in disguise, pulling me under for the sake of a pulse that races, for the exhilaration of adrenaline?
Here lies the problem, my apprehension, my focus. When do I start trusting my heart and how do I figure out the difference between prescience and paranoia? No matter the outcome, I must continue on my path, open to whatever lies ahead.
Image taken by chrisjohnbeckett in Barcelona. I almost edited out the "All you knit is love," but it still fits in here somehow. Maybe it will wipe that grisly/surreal poker table scene, me sitting across from some muscular disembodied heart with hands (in my mind, it's person-sized), out of your head.
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The slow climb out
02 February 2012 06:40 PM
I have been thinking about anger, forgiveness, and compassion. Writer Jim Murdoch recently commented here on the idea that perhaps we have to forgive ourselves before we can forgive other people (while Grace discussed the pointlessness of the concept for her). There is some truth to the idea that self-forgiveness has to come first, though I also see the two working in parallel, each process supporting the other. I’m in the midst of forgiving myself, struggling with what forgiveness means for me and how I apply it to other people (while I talk a good talk, I certainly haven't forgiven all the people on my pain list). I've concluded that a huge part of forgiveness involves compassion, suffering together with others, a recognition of our shared humanity and pain even when our viewpoints differ, even when the other person's vision of us is clouded by their own aching pain.
My desire to be open to others’ misery, even those who have hurt me and are not capable of being open to mine, is strong. I am beginning to feel that being open emotionally does not put me at soul risk (though, of course, this is a very new feeling, an ideal that I have barely put into practice. I can't claim complete emotional openness and 24-hour selfless compassion.). What is so interesting about this feeling, new and delicate and soft, is how it fits together with my recent shifts, my solid acknowledgment of my strength and my desire -- and, hopefully, ability -- to become more connected. Compassion frees me from emotional selfishness and allows me to make myself vulnerable even in the face of rejection, though it doesn't require me to pursue bad situations or put myself in precarious emotional conditions. Being compassionate is not the same as being foolhardy.
Lest you think I really am a Pollyanna, I’ve been writing a lot of very angry personal stuff this week, things totally inappropriate for anyone’s consumption but mine. This writing serves a purpose. It acknowledges my feelings, that I deserve to be treated well, no matter if I am a tempestuous toddler, an angry teenager, or a struggling adult. It carries the conviction that I am capable of authenticity, that I am capable of holding and comforting myself when I am scared and lonely, but can also ask for help when I need it, and that my needs are legitimate and real. These feelings and changes were partially the result of my ability to finally give long-simmering anger a voice and shape. I am grateful to that anger for allowing me to be myself, for helping me recognize when I have been wronged, and for protecting me in difficult times.
But I don’t want to live in anger. I let it serve its purpose. I open my heart again, knowing that I am strong and all too human, that I make mistakes but that my mistakes are not what make me. We all suffer. We all cause pain. Sometimes we run away from suffering, we push it away or deny it, which only traps us in its snares, and in that escape we often hurt others.
It’s people stuck in this cycle for whom I have the most compassion right now, the blind and hurting, those who are scared but don’t know it, those who want closeness but dart away at intimacy. I am slowly climbing out of that dark and airless place, one foot on the fresh meadow grass, the other pushing out of the sludge. I hope that my burgeoning openness, my growing compassion, will help me see others clearly, or at the very least calm me in times of trouble, anxiety, and pain.
We are all interconnected despite our vast differences. The thought comforts me.
Image: Not my kind of compassion. Some positive thinker chalked this on the sidewalk on our route to and from the boy's school. The joke we made was that if you quickly hugged the next person you saw, probably a stranger, they would slug you ("Quick! Slug someone!"). And maybe you would deserve it. Compassion is not forcing your lovin' arms around someone who doesn't want them there.
Easier said than done
31 January 2012 06:08 PM
I struggle with accepting anger in myself and others, wrestle with being with it and not reacting in kind when someone directs (or misdirects) it my way.
This is good. This is hard. To sit with anger, your own or someone else's, to let it be without action or harsh words, with silent contemplation, can be almost impossible. But I think there are ways to feel it and, even if you express it badly at the moment, to pull back and wait for a moment of coolness to discuss it with the other person and to listen to their anger, too. A lot of anger comes from pain, either pain from the immediate present or something left over and suppressed, suppressed and simmering and ready to blow. It can come from fear, too, fear of feeling that pain again, so shove it away, push away the trigger, the other.
But what I really want to write about is anger and forgiveness. I know some people don’t believe in forgiveness (perhaps for them the goal is indifference). I know that it isn’t always possible and is dependent on the situation and the people involved, on the harshness of the crime and sometimes on whether the wrongdoer has taken responsibility for their actions. It sounds like a cliché, and I’m struggling with it myself, but forgiveness is a gift both to me and the person I am forgiving. It is a way of seeing someone and letting them be that person, letting go of attachment to anger, tracing the anger to where it belongs, feeling the pain and setting it free.
Maybe there are people you can forgive but can never be close to again. Maybe there are people whom you forgive and discover that forgiveness is the thing that cleared the way for renewed friendship. Forgiveness doesn’t have an agenda. It is a form of freedom from heavy emotion that drags one down. It's acceptance of the other person's limitations and your own, a nod to humanity.
Here are my forgiveness crucibles: unfairness; emotional cruelty; not giving someone a voice. I can go around and around in my mind about them, go over pains from years ago or just last week, obsessing over the wrong someone did me, imagining the conversation I would have with them, if they would only give me a voice. And so my psyche revs up and the anger lives again and my attachment to the situation is never severed.
I say forgive. Let go. Drop the reins. And, if you must, walk away.
It's a goal, anyway.
I chose the category "Facing fears" for this post because I think to listen to anger, to accept it in yourself and in other people, and then to choose to forgive, is a scary thing. It requires presence and risk taking and authenticity. Bravery. This feels very pie in the sky, but it's also how I feel at this moment.
Image of the boy running from waves in Carmel, free and happy.
The landscape of change
29 January 2012 07:06 AM
The air is cold with a hint of the warmth to come. My picnic basket is packed with healthy, delicious food that I’ve prepared myself, and in the grove of trees off in the distance, the rest of my life awaits. There are people I’ve never met, eagerly anticipating a new connection, and the people I’ve known for years, my close loved ones, the friends who are part of me, they are mingling with the new, happy to see me change and to be a part of it. There will be feasting and dancing and when the sun goes down we will gather by a bonfire fed by the things that didn't work in my life, irrational fear and muddy sadness and self-protective separation going up in flames. I will sit near the fire, my son tucked close to me, his father next to him, both a vital part of my transformation.
The rules I set for myself, the ones where I showed my goodness through self-sacrifice (a conscious choice, not a martyrdom) and removal from the world, do not apply to this new self. I can have an outside life and a happy child. I might even be capable of long-term connection, might allow this heart of mine to sink into true, unselfish love and support.
This shift is permanent, not that there won’t be trouble along the way. I know myself. I can be true to her, authentic, present. I don’t need anyone to show me the path, though I do need people to share the journey with me, to accept my weaknesses and share joy in my strengths, while I do the same for them.
This is a better representation than yesterday's (deleted) post about my inner state. More sleep and a conscious attempt to eat more help with my equilibrium.
Image of the shoes I'll wear on the journey, because I want to look natty along the way.
Letting go of doomsday
10 January 2012 01:08 PM
The West Virginia two-lane roads were endless, they intersected, they peeled off from one another, they rolled up and down hills and through farmland fenced off with wire. What I remember, apart from the monotony of it, the welcome monotony, was the way I saw danger everywhere. Specifically, I remember passing a house with a huge trampoline in the back yard – “There’s a bad idea,” I thought, and pointed it out to my boyfriend, along with my image of a child flipping up into a blue sky and coming down bad on metal or ground. You know, broken limbs, cracked pelvises. Danger, danger everywhere.
I had already pointed out several potential hazards, each with an imagined doomsday scenario behind it. At least I could laugh at myself, the constant anticipation of danger, the preparation for something to go wrong, even when that something wrong would happen to strangers. My thoughts kept me safe, they kept us all safe, if I could only contain it all in my head, be hyper-vigilant: know the danger.
When my mother was here last month, I mentioned the time she and I were driving back from Wilmington to the Eastern Shore and someone cut her off on 213. I was nine. My grandmother had just died and my mother and her unemployed boyfriend and I lived unhappily with my grandfather. Tensions were high and she was explosive. So, the cut off or the surprise brake light, the sudden swerve, set off what was just under the surface. My mother bubbled up, she flung the finger, she tailgated. She followed this person home, even went down their driveway, and we watched the woman sprint from car to front door. Point made, we turned around and went home. I remember the fact of it, the story, more than the actual event.
There was always rage right there, waiting for ignition and you'd better prepare. You would gird yourself, hold it together so that no one else would crack it open again. And when it did fall apart, the sense of responsibility was overwhelming. So don’t stop watching, keep all possible outcomes tossed in the air, observe them as they turn in the wind, but don’t let them crash to the ground.
It’s exhausting. It’s not worth it. It’s no way to live. I unclench my hands finger by finger, loosen my death grip on illusive safety and on a false sense of control. Living to keep safe, to keep that feeling of control, isn't really living. And I'm just realizing that part of forgiving myself is to understand that some things are out of my hands, that I am not responsible. This feeling is deep, the guilt, the feeling that I could have done more, should have anticipated danger, would have held it off with my mind, with my powerful thoughts. My thoughts can't save. They can't kill either. But they can keep me trapped.
I've had enough of that.
I grabbed this image of Slim Pickens riding the bomb in the movie Dr. Strangelove from The Hollywood Projects, but it is available all over the internet.
Throw off the chains of your own making
06 January 2012 06:54 AM
Some readers may remember way back in September when I wrote about taking driving lessons. I took exactly one before letting myself get thrown off track by various things (family health stuff, money stuff, me stuff). The more time that went between that first lesson and now, the more difficult it was to start up again. Yes, I wrote about it once or twice, most recently in my new year’s resolutions, but that didn’t push me forward to do anything.
Here’s what it is like not to drive when you have a kid in Berkeley (and don’t thoroughly embrace slow public transportation; and don’t relish riding a bike – plenty of people here do fine using these methods): I don’t take the boy to doctor’s appointments, even though I’m the one with more time to do so; when the husband is away on business, the kid and I are generally stuck with going to local parks, etc., and if it’s raining, we’re even more stuck; I can’t take the boy to school quickly or get him home quickly; for afterschool play dates, I use a huge bike trailer/stroller to walk both boys the 1.3 miles back to our house (I’ve tried just walking with them and, trust me, it is no fun, but pushing 100+ pounds of boy is also a bit ridiculous.). I also can’t pick up the husband when he’s had surgery, something that has come up once and will come up again soon, I can’t drive him to the airport, and I wait for weekends to go food shopping, with the man and the boy either waiting for me in the parking garage or coming back to pick me up after I’m done. I try to find doctors who are within walking distance. I can’t do play dates at other peoples’ houses (or other things, like special events and birthday parties) when the husband can't drive there without explaining myself or getting a ride.
The end result is that I feel like a drain on my husband’s time in addition to feeling trapped by my own fears and inabilities. Funny thing is, this is a feeling that is so familiar, a track that my mind glides down so easily, that in some ways I think it reinforces itself. That and catastrophic thinking. You out there, most of you, you get into cars all the time, you hop into the driver’s seat and just go without thinking much about it. Me? Even when I am a passenger (though less so, since I am not the one in control of the car) I am very aware of the killing possibilities of a car. And this is where I start and get ramped up: what if I kill someone??
It’s not very likely, is it? But the very thought feeds my anxiety and keeps me from doing anything, and this isn’t the only situation in which I go down the darkest possible path in order to keep myself frozen in place. The best thing to do (thank you, therapist) is to remind myself that I am “catastrophizing” and to talk myself down. OK. It’s all practice, right? Practice that will change how I approach the things that scare me.
So. I start up again on Monday morning with another lesson and have to keep on going, no matter what. In the meantime, I am thinking about what our therapist said about me holding on to parts of myself in the fear that no one else can help contain me. I had the image of me standing in a corner, sepia-toned and faceless, desperately wrapping my arms around my body, while little wisps of me tried to escape. My ghosts, the impressions of me, I grabbed at them as they slipped through my fingers and dissipated into nothingness.
I don’t totally understand it, but what she said brings tears to my eyes. So what do I do about that? I asked. Start from the thought level and it may help with the underlying feelings, she told me.
OK. OK. Small steps forward, changes in thinking, pushes from within and without. Change can be slow, it can happen suddenly, and I’ll take all the help and encouragement I can get.
Image by Sebastian Fritzon.
What good are notebooks?
04 January 2012 11:05 AM
What good are notebooks? They're a lot of good a lot of the time unless they leave you treading water inside your head. Writing this post put the song "Life During Wartime" (Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks? They won't help me survive.) in my head. It seems to fit.
Mission statement
29 September 2011 02:26 PM
I have to write a mission statement for my marriage and family therapy graduate school application, something that should be no more than five typed pages and autobiographical in nature. So welcome to my new occasional series, Things I will Probably Not Put On My Graduate School Mission Statement, though this does help me think through the process.
I make lists of things I don’t want to regret, bottle up emotions to savor when I am alone. I am almost always alone. I engrave those I once loved into my core, I take what was essential between us and store it up for old age or loneliness, for the times when reality does not suffice. I try to take on the perspective of the other.
Bravery is doing something even when it frightens you. On Wednesday morning, I drove around and around a parking lot with an instructor. I drove with confidence. I turned right and right and right and then left and left and left. We ventured out and I drove from one parking lot to another. The instructor and I talked about the career she left behind, about kids and elderly drivers, as I maneuvered the car.
Was I scared? Kind of. But what really scares me is getting out into traffic and doing it again and again even while I am scared. Slowly, that’s the way to go. I need to use just enough imagination to feign confidence (versus imagining the worst of it, me paralyzed at the wheel, the panic, the crush of metal, the destruction). I need to gather my courage for the real test. I need to see myself in the distant moment, project into the future, the all-grown-up me at the wheel. The confident me speaking up in class. The capable me creating a whole new life despite my fears.
So that’s my mission. Not to forget. To hold those I once knew tenderly in memory. To see things from another's point of view. To be brave.
If I told you that’s why I am here, out of some sort of personal journey (the lousy childhood, the adult revelations, the beauty of fucked up me), would that get me in? Do I tell you a different version of the story, me the daughter of a plucky single mom, the lean years of no car and no money, the thinning of familial relationships, the thickening of barriers? Oh, yes, I survived it all intact, I was cunning and hidden and then had to undo the structure, take down the heavy blinds, unleash my needy heart.
How do I spin this past into getting-into-graduate school gold? Sure, from the outside I look like a well-off middle-aged white lady, not a care in the world, but can I tell you about the lonely trembling in empty rooms, the beratings at long-cleared dinner tables, the time it has taken me to feel almost at home in my skin?
The past wearies me. We’ve danced together long enough, though the facts stand. And I still stand before them. We will always be connected, though the connection may be frayed. If I have to conjure it up to explain why I am here, I will, but that isn’t the whole of me or of my reasons for applying.
I want to take what I know through experience and struggle to help other people. I want to help children, the most helpless of all, trapped and marked by adult circumstances. I can’t separate myself from the emotion this brings up in me because I can’t separate myself from my emotions. I will use my experience and this deep reservoir of feeling to assist others. I used to think my childhood and my emotions were handicaps, that I had to separate myself from them in order to live properly in the world. But now I see that they are essential, that they give me strength when I allow them to exist without indulging their more florid characteristics. I can harness them for good and tame them when they threaten to take over my perception.
So that’s my mission. Not to forget. To hold those I once knew tenderly in memory. To see things from another's point of view. To be brave. To help those who are helpless. To not let my past and emotions overwhelm me, but to accept them. Experience provides knowledge, emotion supplies fire and tears. Sometimes both are necessary, the past plus the upwelling of love and anger within.
I make lists of things I don’t want to regret, bottle up emotions to savor when I am alone. I am almost always alone. I engrave those I once loved into my core, I take what was essential between us and store it up for old age or loneliness, for the times when reality does not suffice. I try to take on the perspective of the other.
Bravery is doing something even when it frightens you. On Wednesday morning, I drove around and around a parking lot with an instructor. I drove with confidence. I turned right and right and right and then left and left and left. We ventured out and I drove from one parking lot to another. The instructor and I talked about the career she left behind, about kids and elderly drivers, as I maneuvered the car.
Was I scared? Kind of. But what really scares me is getting out into traffic and doing it again and again even while I am scared. Slowly, that’s the way to go. I need to use just enough imagination to feign confidence (versus imagining the worst of it, me paralyzed at the wheel, the panic, the crush of metal, the destruction). I need to gather my courage for the real test. I need to see myself in the distant moment, project into the future, the all-grown-up me at the wheel. The confident me speaking up in class. The capable me creating a whole new life despite my fears.
So that’s my mission. Not to forget. To hold those I once knew tenderly in memory. To see things from another's point of view. To be brave.
If I told you that’s why I am here, out of some sort of personal journey (the lousy childhood, the adult revelations, the beauty of fucked up me), would that get me in? Do I tell you a different version of the story, me the daughter of a plucky single mom, the lean years of no car and no money, the thinning of familial relationships, the thickening of barriers? Oh, yes, I survived it all intact, I was cunning and hidden and then had to undo the structure, take down the heavy blinds, unleash my needy heart.
How do I spin this past into getting-into-graduate school gold? Sure, from the outside I look like a well-off middle-aged white lady, not a care in the world, but can I tell you about the lonely trembling in empty rooms, the beratings at long-cleared dinner tables, the time it has taken me to feel almost at home in my skin?
The past wearies me. We’ve danced together long enough, though the facts stand. And I still stand before them. We will always be connected, though the connection may be frayed. If I have to conjure it up to explain why I am here, I will, but that isn’t the whole of me or of my reasons for applying.
I want to take what I know through experience and struggle to help other people. I want to help children, the most helpless of all, trapped and marked by adult circumstances. I can’t separate myself from the emotion this brings up in me because I can’t separate myself from my emotions. I will use my experience and this deep reservoir of feeling to assist others. I used to think my childhood and my emotions were handicaps, that I had to separate myself from them in order to live properly in the world. But now I see that they are essential, that they give me strength when I allow them to exist without indulging their more florid characteristics. I can harness them for good and tame them when they threaten to take over my perception.
So that’s my mission. Not to forget. To hold those I once knew tenderly in memory. To see things from another's point of view. To be brave. To help those who are helpless. To not let my past and emotions overwhelm me, but to accept them. Experience provides knowledge, emotion supplies fire and tears. Sometimes both are necessary, the past plus the upwelling of love and anger within.
Taking the wheel
24 September 2011 03:09 PM
Maybe I shouldn't even tell you about it.
It's not as if anything is real yet, or actual. I found the school. I emailed them and they emailed me back. But absolutely nothing has happened yet. I haven't even set up an appointment.
But let me first tell you about the frustration that led me there.
Friday afternoon, needing a change from the normal 1.3 mile walk home from school, the boy and I took a city bus instead. This wasn't much of a time or shoe leather saver. The nearest bus stop is .7 miles away. It consists of an uncovered bench (an amenity not provided at all stops) jammed between the curb and a gas station on a very busy street. We waited for 15 minutes in traffic fumes and tried to talk over the roar of sirens and motors, all to ride less than a mile with a 3-block walk home at the end. We paid $3.15 for the privilege. It took us an hour to get from door to door.
The boy doesn't really walk. He meanders. Our trips home are exceedingly leisurely, with built-in pauses (the places we stop and rest, the spots where he grazes on wild fennel, pears, or apples, the vast community garden two blocks away from home where we wander the rows of fading plants). It has taken us an hour and 20 minutes to make what for me is a 22-minute trip. At our best it's taken about 40 minutes. The idea of taking this walk in the upcoming rainy season, with its deluges of water, me and the boy unhappily trudging and squelching through puddles, makes me tense up. The logistics of morning trips to school when my husband is out of town (like Monday and Tuesday of the upcoming week) give me a knot in my neck. The days we bring another kid home are also getting to me. Corralling two six-year old boys on a mile-long walk through multiple street crossings is stressful even when the kids listen to you and are safety conscious. And the bus isn't really an option.
This morning, we had our usual family trip to the grocery store. My husband drives and he and the boy hang out in the parking garage while I gather the goods. Then this afternoon I needed something pronto from the pharmacy and we all piled in the car again. Last weekend we made a family trip to Jo-Ann Fabrics, the guys hanging around for the most part while I gathered fabric and thread. And in a few weeks, my husband will most likely be having (routine) surgery and I will not be able to take him to the hospital or pick him up or swing by school to get the boy quickly.
These long walks, the family shopping trips, my inability to transport my husband when he is in need, are all because of one thing: I don't drive. This didn't matter as much when we lived in a convenient city and the boy was small, but Berkeley is less pedestrian friendly and having a kid changes it all. I can't take him (easily) to doctor's appointments. When school is out and we have a leisurely day spreading out before us, we can't jump into the car for an impromptu trip. While we could utilize public transportation more often, and will as he gets older, some of these things require a car, either to get there quickly or at all.
On Thursday night, I was having a beautiful dream. I was on my bike, racing around the streets of Berkeley, free and happy, speeding without fear. I woke up in the middle of it with one thought, a thought I've been tossing around for a while now: I have to learn how to drive, to face down the fear. I have to.
So. The thing I probably shouldn't be announcing: I've contacted a driving school that specializes in lessons for fearful adults. I am scared -- of taking lessons and of weaseling out of taking lessons. I try to imagine merging onto one of the insane California highways and then tell myself: just imagine getting into the driver's seat. Maybe starting the car. Go slowly, even in your mind.
Nothing is set up yet. But I am going to try. Because I have to. It's another step in becoming an adult, one that I skipped. The why of it no longer matters, the psychology and personal symbolism behind it. I must do it. I can do it. And now that I've made a big deal out of it (though I still am not telling my mother just yet), it will be tougher not to do it. At least I hope so.
Image by cszar.
Indulging the fear
22 August 2011 05:48 AM
The popular girls didn’t wear primary colors, but they were bright, the Esprit t-shirts and the jeans in shades that never occurred in nature. That was how we measured value, in the clothes, the labels, the human search for approval and status in the most base of ways. You needed money, you needed to be an extrovert, you needed connection and cotillion tickets and a house with a yard. Your family needed a new car, or at the very least a car, and maybe even two parents, two parents who were supportive and together, with an entire ensemble of family behind them, too. You needed a group to support you, to ride along until you were able to swim by yourself, to be on your own.
I don’t want to come across as bitter – no, I’m not bitter – but I am close to the edge this morning, thinking about how we measure our value and the value of other people. It’s a strange way to think about humanity, to think in terms of how much a person is worth, not in dollars, but in the right to take up space, to demand attention and love. Aren’t we all worth the same -- that is, aren't we inherently valuable? We may be, but that’s not how it works practically speaking.
My fear is that I will die alone. We all die alone, of course, unless perhaps we take someone down with us, or go out in a jetliner crash or a conflagration at a packed hotel or train car or apartment complex, but I mean alone. The family that buffeted me when I was small has died and dispersed. The people I trust are few, and my own little family may not be enough. I can be brave, I can, I try, but sometimes it just hits me, the fear, the paralyzing feeling in the pit of my stomach. I may not be capable of creating the connections I need and crave, my self-protective shield is already in place, and I am not of enough value for people to reach out for me.
Yes, I am getting better, I am healing and I am brave and strong and capable, but this feeling of not mattering, of being existentially alone, is overwhelming right now. Maybe it was the continuation of our home reorganization, the weekend spent emptying a closet that has been packed with boxes since we moved here, the dismantling of the antique armoire we bought a decade ago to make room for a new configuration in the back room, this rifling through a recent past, through days of connection that feel very far away. Maybe it’s the process of making the room into something else, a physical acknowledgment of change. At any rate, I’m drowning, the whirlpool is pulling me underwater, my lungs are filling up, and I don’t know who to reach for. I feel like an item on discount at the dollar store, unwanted and cheap. Disposable. I am on my own.
Dying alone, living alone. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I don’t see how I can get out of it at the moment. Surely I’ll feel better tomorrow or the next day or next week. For now I’m just going to indulge this feeling, tinged with fear and self-pity, for a few more minutes before I put it away, box it up until I am ready to feel it again.
From the prompt "Very popular."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. This one took a bit of editing for clarity.
Image by Sebastian Fritzon.
Risky business
08 August 2011 06:14 AM
This is not the time to worry about how you look, about the sags and the stretch marks and the jagged lines. This is not the time to insist that the other does the same. Just stand there, vulnerable, naked, open to whatever happens next. Yeah, you try it, lady, you tell me with a roll of the eyes. You’re right, you’re right. I don’t know if I could do it either.
There are certain kinds of risk-taking that are appropriate, times when you make the leap off the cliff knowing that the drop off isn’t far or that there is a soft surface waiting to envelop you below. There are ways to game this, though the word game implies a calculated process. There are ways to remember that risking connection doesn’t mean risking your soul, baring yourself before the fully clothed. There are ways to practice it, too, ways to take little steps towards emotional freedom.
I’ve been reading lots of self-help books, oh so many, not so much on the cheesy side of things, but still, they are self-help books. The latest is about relationships when one of the partners has been through childhood trauma. Not PTSD trauma, necessarily, but, well, trauma. It’s taken me a long time to think of myself as someone who was traumatized by parts of my childhood, but now I, umm, own it. Not in a self-pitying way, but in a “yep, that was pretty bad” kind of way.
Not surprisingly, as someone who was abandoned at times, neglected and left to deal with overwhelming circumstances on my own as a child, as someone who was specifically told how bad I was and then saw how the people around me acted to prove it, well, getting naked (metaphorically) isn’t so easy. Oh, sure, it's become easier, especially in my writing. And I was reassured to read that traumatized people who can tell coherent stories about their childhoods tend not to pass the buck on to their own children, though I know I still have a ways to go there. It’s the closeness, the skin to skin stuff, that has me flummoxed, that has my heart pounding in the middle of the night, that wakes me up at 3:00 a.m. with soothing dreams of escape, of sweet sweet aloneness.
My childhood was a set up that made any deeply intimate situation feel like soul risk. It was also a set up that led to poor boundaries, to giving myself over to those who retreat, the constant pursuit of approval. I understand it more now, I do, and I think I am on a different path, but it’s still so fucking hard. To stay in the moment, to stay in my head, to read these reactions of panic as vestiges from long ago. What you think about me says less about me than it does about you, and your reactions come from your own place of darkness. It's not me, it's not me, and what is me I see with clarity now, with the distance of someone who lived those things long ago. Or I am slowly slowly getting there, on the path to freedom of a sort.
From the prompt "Time out."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos.
Image by Gaellery.
Goodbye girl
18 April 2011 02:24 PM
It made me wonder what the big deal was, why I waited so long to just get on a fucking bike. My husband and I went on a bike tour when we were first dating -- though I didn't actually bike more than half an hour or so -- so it's not like I haven't been on a bike in adulthood. But it wasn't comfortable. I was still nervous. I wasn't ready.
This is what I have to admit and hate to admit: bike as symbol. I am so tired of carrying around these symbols, these heavy burdens of a non-childhood. What do children do? They learn how to ride bikes. They have bikes. They take the minor risk that getting up on two wheels entails for a taste of freedom, for the feeling of wind and legs pumping and sweat. I wasn't a child who liked to balance, to fly along on my own (much like my son, but through patient instruction with his dad, he's getting there). I could point to the tense learning sessions with my mother, whose temper was short. She was impatient and gave up as easily on me as I gave up on the bike. But my mother's teaching techniques are not the issue here.
Bike riding attached me to a stage of childhood I wasn't ready to leave. Because I never experienced it.
Sometimes to know that something is true, you have to write it or say it and then let the feelings emerge. I've been thinking about this for a few days now, have talked to my husband about it. On some levels, it feels ridiculous, the idea of not being able to do something as simple as get on a bike with confidence based on now-obscure history. It feels stupid, too, or weak. But I write it and it makes me cry and I know it is true.
An acquaintance recently (and repeatedly) called me "sweet." This is the female equivalent of being a nice guy. It's bland and simple and erases any number of my darker finer qualities. It's the kind of thing you say to someone when they are a little boring and clean. Too clean. Scrubbed clean. When I challenged him, this person pointed to my girlishness, among other things. Girlish is not how I think of myself, but I also see how trapped I am at different ages, how my past has been a roadblock. When it comes to certain experiences, I am totally a girl, from preschooler to teenager. I don't enjoy being a girl, trapped in helplessness, a passenger in my own life.
When I rode that bike this morning, I felt like an adult finally accomplishing a child's task. The bike has become a bike, the ride something that I just do. I'm sure that there will be some challenges as I take on traffic and hills, as my rides get longer, but its symbolism has been almost scrubbed clean.
I wonder as I take on my various fears and face those blocks if this will be the case with everything. Will I suddenly become a confident driver? Will social situations become easier? Will my tolerance for looking like a moron shoot up so that I attempt the things I have not yet perfected, the things I know I'll look stupid doing? I'm not expecting a personality change, but I do hope for a grownup attitude, the freeing of the girl.
She's not really alive, you know. She lives in the 1970s with her long hippie hair and her quick temper and her summer tan. She reads and reads and sits in the air conditioning by herself. She wants to punch you but she's afraid to, and that will be her last action as she is set free, her fists at the ready, ready to take down every person who told her that she wasn't good enough to live, that she was only good for one thing, that what she wanted didn't count, that she should be quiet and take it.
What she wanted was eternal life. She wanted to stay trapped forever until she got it right. Together that's where we are right now, me and the girl. She's sullen. When she gets angry she bites her tongue. She's lonely. I hold out my hand and she doesn't look at me.
Eventually she will take it. "Let me get you out of here," I'll tell her. And she will smile as she reaches for me and disintegrates into light.
Image: Me on the new bike (before the seat adjustment).