A Strange Intersection

I feel like I have arrived at a strange intersection in my life. I've been having multiple phone interviews over the past several days, and yesterday I had a 2 hour face to face interview. The position was very similar to what I'm doing now, and using software and systems I'm familiar with. I asked strong questions of them they weren't expecting, and we had some really good dialogue about what I could bring to the table. If the money is right, the commute would be worth it, plus I can then start looking for apartments. As much as I love living at my parents for free, there is emotional rent that I'm paying by being here. To be clear, it's far better than the alternative, but I'm looking forward to having some of my own space to breathe in. Eventually. Someday.

I have a couple other positions pending that I'm waiting to hear back on scheduling face to face interviews, but I'm really not feeling 100% about any of them. Most of them are full time, and that makes me a little nervous, but I really don't have much of a choice. I need to take care of some things, which means other things need to be sacrificed. My energy is the lamb, it seems.

But other than standing at this career crossroad, things feel like they are moving in a good direction in my life. I'm formulating a more solid plan for my exit strategy, my relationship with my kids continues to gain strength, I've attended an orientation to help volunteer with a really cool organization that is close to my heart and puts me back into a community I had been terribly missing, and I'm feeling so much less anxious than the previous months... Less restless and less squirrely. I'm feeling pretty content, even though there are so many unknown variables up in the air. I have placed my Trust in the process, and know that as long as I keep doing what I need to, everything will come out okay.

It's a good day.

Redwood Trees

A comedian I enjoy recently got married. He shared an incredible wedding video and it was very moving. Their officiant said something that really stood out to me. He spoke about the redwood trees that their ceremony took place beneath. I don't have the exact quote, but he said that redwoods are totally autonomous above ground, yet their roots are interconnected deep underground, lending strength and support. He said that they (the couple) should be like the redwoods: free to be fully autonomous, yet deeply rooted and connected on a spiritual level to lend support.

I have no desire to get remarried anytime soon. I'm still at the beginning of unraveling my current legal obligations, but I dont have a burning desire to turn around and get married again once it's over.

Someday, I'd like to be like a redwood tree.

Suicides This Week...

Two suicides by celebrities this past week. I didn't know either of them personally, but something about such public review of peoples issues after they've taken their own lives is so insensitive. People taking to social media and popping off about how so-and-so was such a selfish coward, "they had money and fame and family... what a whiny selfish baby to do that!" It pains me to see such hateful speech towards someone who was obviously in enough emotional pain to end their own suffering. Money and fame and family will only get you so far. Sometimes people run out of hope and simply can't do it anymore... and who are we, the fickle masses, to judge?

Publicly discussed celebrity suicide always makes me catch my breath. It triggers me. I can't help but think about Jen, a highschool friend who killed herself by shotgun shortly after we graduated from high school. I can't help but think about RJ, my ex boyfriend who experienced ultimate suffering at his own hands for 3 days before his body finally gave up. And I think about Joe - finding his huge form gently slumped against his roommates bedroom door in the hall way. Freshly showered and naked, his hands lightly resting in his lap. The shot gun next to him on the floor. The side of his face that remained intact was relaxed, peaceful even.

Then I think about my own distant dances with suicide. By the standard of compassion (or lack thereof) people would simply roll their eyes, say I was acting out for attention, and that I was just an angst loving teen who just needed to knock it off. That's what the response would have been if anyone actually knew. That's the response I witnessed towards others when they were public about their self harm. I took half a bottle of Vicodin once - a long time ago. I threw them all up shortly after, but I had swallowed them all, one by one. I used to be a cutter. When there was a threat of being found out, I played it off that the designs I was carving into my arms and legs were just "body modification" as I wasn't old enough to get a tattoo. In reality, the designs were trial runs of how much pressure and force it would take. I was a bulimic. At my smallest I weighed 85 lbs and my kidney's started to fail. I smoked for a brief period. Marlboro Reds. "Cowboy killers." All of these things were dances with death, invitations to die that I mailed and delivered to myself.

Yet, I didn't.

Instead I sought help. Quietly. I have never been one to broadcast whats going on inside me. Even now that is partly true - this blog is pretty much my own personal soapbox, and I'm aware of how very few eyes glance over it.

Initially seeking help was a bit of a disaster, but I kept trying. Kept advocating for my own mental health. As I grew older and faced more and more complicated and difficult issues, I learned to navigate without my previous self harm coping mechanisms. I continue to keep on keeping on.

My current state of mind is a much healthier one, even as I stare down the tunnel of a life sentence of chronic pain. At times I still feel weak, but overall, I am so much stronger and healthier in my mental health. I am so much more self aware. I'm so much more open and voluntarily vulnerable, even when lingering fears of judgement move in the shadows. I've learned that it's okay to not be okay sometimes. I've learned to trust in Something Greater. I've learned to hand over my end of days to The Creator - death will come for me when my time here is done, with or without invitation.

So for those struggling with the loss of your loved ones by suicide, or triggered by the loss of these recent celebrities taking their own lives, I offer John O'Donohue's poem, For the Family and Friends of a Suicide. Now is the time to be gentle with each other as we each mourn our own losses, as we each process our own dances with death.

Personalizing and Projecting

Following the previous theme of fabricating disinterest and a change of heart during the spaces in-between, today's message was about personalizing and projecting. Opposites really, but both can occur during those times of self doubt and loneliness. I have witnessed this from some of my friends, but I'm also working on identifying and acknowledging this within myself too. Personalizing steps in when I assume that I have done something wrong - that I have said or done something to "deserve" distance and imagined disinterest. Its taking in and internalizing things that have very little to nothing to do with me. On the flip side is projection, where I then push out my wants and needs onto others, which typically is not what they want or need.

I have been actively working on identifying these traits as I experience them and even slightly before (when I feel the knee jerk reactions stirring), so that I stop myself from creating stress that isn't there, and stop myself from pushing what I think I want onto others.

Initially it felt like a lot of tongue biting, of holding myself back and stuffing my feelings aside. But as I advance in my practice, it feels less and less like forced disassociation and more like... Mindfulness. But then where do my needs come into the picture? This topic seems to be reoccurring for me, but as I continue to grow and change, so do my needs and wants. If I'm being mindful of respecting others needs and wants, am I also actively honoring my own? Or am I putting them on the back burner to honor others above myself, my previous mind set?

I spent a little time last night in quiet contemplation about what my needs actually are, vs my previously fabricated ideal of that I thought I needed. When all the layers of BS are stripped away, I have very little needs. I have a few wants, but they aren't exactly possible or feasible at the moment. All of my needs are aspects that can be taken care of (that must be taken care of) by myself. I am solely responsible for my own needs. I can't depend on or trust anyone else to take care of them for me, since most of them live within me. My wants are a little different. I want to be able to share experiences with others. I want to be able to move forward in a career that feels better suited to me. I want to have my own place, where I am free to spend time alone, or with friends, without feeling like I'm on edge. I want to feel safe.

Again, most of these wants are entirely dependent on me, but I also acknowledge that I don't want to be on the road of self discovery and mindfulness alone all the time either. I am not a completely solitary person by nature, and I think wanting companionship on occasion is not a weakness or a fault. I like spending time with people. Spending physical time together doesn't always work out, as some of my closest friends are spread from one side of this continent to the other. For my local friends there are scheduling conflicts and life just happens. I don't hold that against anyone or resent them for it. When friends have said "I hope you don't take my distance personally," I can say with confidence that I am actively mindful of it. I don't take it personally.

My therapist said something the other day that made me a little uncomfortable. She said that I should think about and figure out what the purpose is behind some of my closest relationships. While I appreciate where she was going with that statement, it seemed a daunting task to make a list of what each of my friends "bring to the table." She said it might be a good exercise as I continue to evaluate my needs and wants, and to better understand who I can reliably reach out to when I feel I need support along the journey. I told her it made me nervous, and when she asked why, I told her not all the lessons I have to learn from people are offered up front right off the bat. She said that I had a point, but that I should still take a look at my friendships and really think about who can offer what in forms of support. I have avoided this exercise in the past, mostly out of a fabricated fear that I have no one I can really depend on when I truly need it, and I'd rather stay in a bubble of ignorant bliss.

By shedding the layers of mental garbage and pulling away from the stories I have been telling myself all these years, I do realize that it's me who had been putting up the walls all along. The made up fears of distance and disinterest gave me a false sense of being under attack, of needing to prepare myself and brace myself for the blows I assumed were coming emotionally. I gathered bricks of assumption and started building, thinking I was protecting myself.

Bricks are heavy.

I did I guided meditation once for a friend many years ago. The theme was putting down stones. That the pebbles and stones and boulders of thoughts we continuously pick up in our minds are not ours to carry. They are to be acknowledged, looked at, examined closely even, but they are not to be clutched and carried. Set the stone down. Set it down.

Looking over my shoulder at the pile of bricks I've walked away from I feel a mix of emotion. Embarrassment for the time and energy I invested in creating them... and a little sense of pride for being able to recognize what they are, and for moving beyond them.

The Spaces In-Between

Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between. Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart.
Our minds work very hard to make something out of nothing. We can perceive silence as rejection in an instant, and then build a cold castle on the tiny imagined brick.
The only release from the tensions we weave around nothing is to remain a creature of the heart. By giving voice to the river of feelings as they flow through and through, we can stay clear and open.
In daily terms, we call this checking with each other, though most of us reduce this to a grocery list: How are you today? Do you need any milk? Eggs? Juice? Toilet paper? Though we can help each other survive with such outer kindnesses, we help each other thrive when the checking in with each other comes from a list of inner kindnesses: How are you today? Do you need any affirmation? Clarity? Support? Understanding?
When we ask these deeper questions directly, we wipe the mind clean of its misconceptions. Just as we must dust our belongings from time to time, we must wipe away what covers us when we are apart. 

I hate admitting how relevant this was to me this morning as I read it. There have been times (in the last 6 months particularly) that I have been really trying to grow in this very specific corner of my life. I absolutely used to be one of those people who would make assumptions about silence equating to disinterest, or distance meaning the other person no longer cares or feels the same way or any number of imaginary worst case scenario's. On the heels of removing myself from a very controlling relationship where silence was used as punishment, I began to realize that this fear of the silent treatment is a knee jerk reaction on my part. That part of my bizarre underlying need for reassurance has been a learned one. And it is a trait that I am working very hard on unlearning.

The "checking in" is awkward for me. I internally cringe because there are days I need a little extra reassurance, but I'm afraid to ask because I just did a check in a couple weeks ago. I'm uncomfortable with the thought of coming across as needy, whiny, jumpy, or having a complete lack of self confidence. While there may be a little truth to some of those traits, they are things I am actively working on, so I'm overly aware of them, and likely hyper sensitive about them. I have been working very hard on not taking distance personally. Everyone has their own lives, their own issues and things to deal with. It's during those spaces in-between that some of the work gets done. But I also crave communication and community. And as people pull away from me, I'm learning to respect the space they need, to give it without hurt feelings and made up stories in my head about disinterest, and am learning to understand that it likely has nothing to do with me. It's a completely different way of thinking from my past modus operandi, so it can at times feel confusing or strange. Those are the times when I need a quick reassurance that I'm pointed in the right direction, and also the times I'm most apprehensive to ask.

My angel card today is Healing. It seems entirely appropriate as healing, really, is what this is all about. Healing and growing.

Weird Day

I sat down at my computer tonight and thought "I really should write something" as this weekend has been a challenging one. Hot topics included my right and constant need to set physical boundaries with certain individuals over and over and over (multiple times over the course of one day even) and also setting standards of appropriate body images for my pre-teen daughter. Neither of which the other party wanted to address or discuss like an adult. It was uncomfortable and frustrating, and it was pointed out to me that undoubtedly the closer I get to where I need to be, the less I am going to be able to tolerate these behaviors. And it's true. I feel myself growing wary of the constant invalidation of my needs and the constant unwanted intrusion on my personal space. It's getting very hard to hold my tongue, and I can't help but feel like this is bullshit.

Then I remembered my reading from this morning.

"...the everhumbling cycle of growing strong roots comes from eating what grows from our own shit, from digesting and processing our own humanity."

I suddenly felt a surge of calm awareness. I am going to get through this okay. Not only that, but I am going to continue to grow through the bullshit and be a stronger person because of it. I've already learned so much about what healthy relationships can look like, and what I will never allow myself to tolerate ever again. I can learn from my mistakes and grow from them.

I am going to get through this okay.

.....

When I got home this evening I was on the phone. Normally I wrap up my calls before entering my parents house, but today I wasn't quite ready to hang up. My dad wasn't exactly waiting up for me, but he made the effort to come say hello. I could tell he wanted to talk, and being on the phone was a nice way to avoid it. But after I hung up the phone, I realized I should check on him and see if he needed something.

He wanted to complain.

He wanted to vent and complain and talk about the fence business, about my brothers work ethic, about his frustration with paying my brothers mortgage for the last 5 months straight, about the pain in his foot, about his fears that it isn't going to get better, about his guilt of being such a burden to my mother, about his frustrations about being so dependent still...

Then he stopped himself.

"Wow... I didn't know I had all that bottled up in there. I normally don't complain this much..."

I took a deep breath. I didn't have any fight left in me after a full day of tongue biting and keeping my guard up, so I didn't lay into him about any of it. About the inappropriateness of discussing his issues with my brother to me YET AGAIN, or the complaining about his recent foot issues to his daughter with a chronic illness that involves pain on a daily basis. Instead I told him that I could appreciate his frustrations, and that it must be really hard for him. I also told him that I was familiar with the fear of not knowing if things will ever "get better" and how to navigate the idea of a new normal. I told him I could empathize with his frustrations and sadness at watching someone else take over the business that he had grown, and doing it in a way that he himself wouldn't do. I told him that I understood where he was coming from, and that I was sorry that he was going through this.

He immediately settled down and we talked about other things. He just needed to vent and needed someone to validate how he was feeling. He thanked me for listening. I told him that someday he would have an opportunity to return the favor. I probably should have told him I would send him a bill for $120 for being his therapist, hahaha!

For Beauty

As stillness in stone to silence is wed,
May solitude foster your truth in word. 

As a river flows in ideal sequence,
May your soul reveal where time is presence. 

As the moon absolves the dark of distance,
May your style of thought bridge the difference. 

As the breath of light awakens color,
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder. 

As spring rain softens the earth with surprise,
May your wintery places be kissed by light. 

As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance,
May the grace of change bring you elegance. 

As clay anchors a tree in light and wind,
May your outer life grow from peace within. 

As twilight pervades the belief of night,
May beauty sleep lightly within your heart.  

-John O'Donohue
To Bless the Space Between Us

As I was fumbling around yesterday, attempting to get ready for an interview while also trying to will away a looming headache, I realized that I didn't feel attractive on the outside. I curled my hair, I did my eyes, and I joked that I was "pretending to look pretty." But I didn't look pretty. I didn't feel pretty. I looked like every other woman my age who is tired, sick, slightly overweight, and starting their lives over at 38. Curled hair and a little mascara doesn't transform who you are, how others view you, but these are the weapons of war that are handed to little girls and instilled that without them, we are not "put together" - this is our war paint. If you don't "put your face on," you are somehow viewed as being lazy, disorganized, frumpy, depressed...

I dislike makeup. Always have. Partly because my mother wasn't a fan and didn't really teach me how to use it, and partly because I have always felt that it was a form of hiding - a form of deception. Applying makeup to others is an art form - one that I find to be interesting from an artistic standpoint, but I don't like being my own canvas.

With me, what you see is what you get. Yes, I'll occasionally do my hair so it doesn't look like a ratty wig, but that is about it. I'll wax or shave every once in a while, but it isn't important to me. I've never been one of those women who's worth was dependent on the silkiness of her legs. I recently attempted an armpit detox and switched to all natural products. After giving it a go for a couple months, I've switched back to my regular deodorant as I quickly grew tired of stinking the second I broke any kind of a sweat. Apparently I do have some standards after all. And yet... I feel like there is this constant standard that I'm supposed to adhere to. That I'm supposed to be pretty.

But I don't feel pretty. I never have.

My husband used to compliment me all the time. To the point of annoyance. He still does. But it feels so shallow, and it's always superficial. Compliments are always based on my looks. Put a little makeup on and he's all over me like a rash. He doesn't understand why I don't blush and thank him for pointing out how I look. He doesn't understand that how I look is not a measure of my worth in my own eyes, so he's merely complimenting only a facade.

The greatest compliment I have ever received was from someone saying that they could see how far I've come - that they can see the ways in which I'm growing and learning and really diving into the "hard work."  Compliments on the work you put into the inside are so much fewer and farther between, but these are the compliments that matter to me.

So as I read John O'Donohue's poem above this morning, it moved me. There is beauty in change. There is beauty in shifting from darkness to light. There is beauty in being present. There is beauty in grace. There is beauty in growth. This is where my beauty lies. Others may not see it right away, but I know it's there. It's not in the number on the scale, or how youthful a foundation makes my skin look... God doesn't care what eye shadow makes my eyes "pop," and frankly, neither do I.

That's not to say I'm going to let myself completely go to shit. I do want to be the healthiest physical form of myself to continue my emotional and spiritual growth, within my control. Heal my body as best I can while I continue to heal my heart and mind.

I don't want to be pretty.

I want to be beautiful. 
Full of beauty.