Okay. Let’s address the elephant in the room. Actually, there is an entire herd gathering. It’s getting crowded in here…the most recent elephant is my ADHD diagnosis. I’ve been gonna talk about it, but I’m still figuring it out. When the doctor and I talked I had just started back on an antidepressant and was in for a three week consult. I was not feeling a whole lot better, which is to say that I was still having trouble functioning. Just that morning I had made a pot of coffee and forgot to put the carafe under the spout; coffee poured out everywhere before I noticed. My doctor was adamant that I give the ADHD medication a try, but suggested we postpone the start of that another three weeks. That way I was not introducing two new medications in less than a six week span. Sounded wise to me.
So I had my first dose of generic Adderall yesterday. I didn’t feel any different. Perhaps a tiny bit more able to focus – I am writing here, after all. That hasn’t been happening easily for weeks now. I will have to keep you posted on progress. I will say that the ADHD diagnosis has been a huge thing to come to terms with. I don’t want it. It feels like something that I would associate with children or young adults, and it’s embarrassing. But man oh man…it rather explains a lot. Like, my whole life. I think the hardest part to accept is how profoundly different my life might have been if this had come to light sooner.
I am seventy years old. Relationships have been hard all of my life. I am a classic under-achiever, often procrastinating important deadlines until the last minute and then exhausting myself to meet them. Anxiety has been a lifelong companion. It was my Mother’s lifelong companion, and all four of my siblings. Out of seven people in my biological family I am the only one without substance addictions, and the only one who never smoked cigarettes. I have a son, a niece and two nephews. They all have it, I’m sure; the younger two were treated with Ritalin in grade school, which was a new treatment 20 years ago.
All of us, all four generations if I include my grandparents, exhibit the symptoms. And it is debilitating. I have seen counselors all of my adult life, so for the better part of fifty years. I have gone on and off antidepressants with mediocre results. It is entirely possible that all of this dysfunction and struggle could have been alleviated to some degree with the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD. But it’s relatively new for doctors and therapists, especially to address in older women.
There will be follow up with a specialist I must wait to see, and I will explore all the options for treatment and hopefully find something natural that will help. But I will seek help. I will always seek to be ever-increasingly healthier mentally and physically. Regardless of age, I will always seek to improve myself, my life skills, and my quality of life. That’s a given. I hope the same is true for you. Let’s get well and then let’s get better!
For decades I’ve been told that I am hard on myself. I’m not convinced. I am unequivocally uninterested in lowering my standards. For anyone. Including myself. If anything, I think that I let myself off the hook too easily.
But perhaps they are referring to my self talk. It isn’t nice. I once had a telephone conversation with my sister about my other sister. She said, “I’d much rather talk to you. At least you don’t start your sentences with ‘you know what your problem is?” I replied, “No. But I do often end them with, ‘what were you thinking, you stupid idiot??!!!!!” We laughed.
How do you talk to yourself? Do you know? Do you catch yourself saying things you wouldn’t say to anyone else? I often start my self talk with, “well, if you’re so smart…” followed by whatever the current mess happens to be.
I will say this changed a great deal when I was so sick a few years ago. I was hospitalized with Lyme disease, and I was in the worst pain I had ever experienced. Intravenous Dilaudid (morphine) was not helping and I could do nothing but lay as still as possible, tears flowing down my cheeks, barely breathing. I remember thinking that I had never been in that much pain. Now mind you, I gave birth to a 9.6 pound baby completely naturally. I’ve had laparoscopic surgery with no anesthesia, and extensive dental work without novocaine. None of those things touched the pain from the Lyme infection.
The nurses who were caring for me that week were so enormously kind. It was dramatic and astonishing to me how different it felt. I felt like a little child being nurtured by a kind and loving caretaker – and I had to admit to myself that I had no conscious memory of ever feeling that way before. I left the hospital days later just wanting to learn how to live more softly. Wanting a softer life. Not an easier life, but softer in all the ways possible. I wanted to eat softer – more fresh fruits and green veggies. And lay in softer, warmer, sheets and blankets. I wanted to move slowly through the world; quietly. I wanted to speak in whispers. Kindnesses…just kindnesses…
I was changed. Sickness does that. Grief does that. I lost a lot of weight that summer; I shed a lot of grief. I have to admit today that I have fallen back into a lifelong habit of being rather unforgiving with myself, let alone others. And I am not happy about that. But today I am reminded that I want to live softly. I need to learn to live softly. I want to find my magic again. Magic is soft. Magic is kind. Magic is a sweet child skipping through the world in awe of life.
I love my life. What do you need to love your life today? Do you have any idea how magical you are?! You are. And I appreciate you.
“If we are lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are like bird’s nests.” – Gloria Steinem
I have long since lost count of how many times I have moved. Here’s a confession few know about me: I have been married four times. Three husbands, four marriages. All four ended in divorce. My first husband was a high school boyfriend. My parents had agreed to send me to boarding school after I threatened to run away – and I did so one summer. I managed to hide out for a couple of weeks in friend’s basements before a friend’s mother agreed to intervene on my behalf. By the age of 15 I couldn’t live at home any longer. I instinctively knew the situation was abusive, although it would be decades before I even began to unravel that situation.
I was 18 the first time I got married, and it only took a few months to figure out that my husband had a drug problem, and a few more months to realize there was nothing I could do about it. So I went “back home” to my parents, but only for a few awful days before finding a girlfriend I could rent a room from. And I never looked back, although I did go back again and again to pack up my younger siblings one by one and move them out. Not soon enough, of course, as the damage was done. Scrambling for survival myself, a safe place to sleep was all I had to offer.
By the third time I got married in my forties, I was no longer enduring physical or sexual abuse. That marriage would also prove intolerable, and not once, but twice. To this day we are still friends, and to this day he yet fails to comprehend any responsibility in it’s failing. As he so often said, we didn’t have a problem. I had a problem. As it happened, he was right, and my problem had a name.
The first fifty years of childhood are the hardest. I survived them by being scrappy. For the first 3 decades of living on my own I was able to find decent work, and when an emergency or large expense threatened my housing and independence, I would supplement my meager income by selling off family heirlooms, primarily beautiful antique furniture. I wish I could have kept it. Only a few small momentos still exist.
But this way of life (which I am only grateful for) leaves it’s scars. One of mine seems to be a deep, simmering grief for the home – THE home – that I have never known. It is truly all I’ve ever wanted for. A home of my own. Safe. Clean. Beautiful. A nest. Perhaps that is why I have always been fascinated by bird nests?!
In October of 1990, House and Garden magazine published an article by Gloria Steinem about her newly decorated NYC apartment, ‘Ms. Steinem on the Home Front.’ I still have that magazine. Somehow weird items have survived all the relocations…but in truth, this article made my heart sing. It has continued to inspire me all these years.
This morning, the 12th of December, 2024, I opened my YouTube feed and found this story. Gloria Steinem talking about her home of 58 years. I am watching through tears. If I had no other inspiration at all, Gloria would be enough.
Recently I posted a journal entry about being diagnosed with ADHD, and while that is true, the writing sounded whiney to me. Have I mentioned that I am now coming out of a depression? I’ve been back on antidepressants for almost a month. I feel like a different person. Truthfully, the SSRI’s don’t take away the sadness or gloomy outlook – and I wouldn’t want them to. I know when they are working because I first have a physiological response: my shoulders come down, my chest expands, I breathe easier. My joints ache less. The nightmares abate and I can sleep restfully. I’m calmer in every situation.
And then the healing can begin. My thinking begins to untangle – not unravel like a dumpster fire in a flash flood! But untangle – and make sense again. I can follow one thread to the next in a cohesive way; I can think straight again. I can think. I can reason.
Next come the creative urges. Beauty excites me again…I hadn’t noticed when that had stopped happening. Ahhhhh….I have inklings of delight again. The medication allows me to relax just enough to sleep, to dream, to imagine. And that is how it works. It doesn’t take away my frustrations, my difficulties, or my grief. It allows me to cope with them. To sort through them, prioritize them, and plan for productive change. I can love my life again.
I don’t remember the first time I realized how glad I am to be here now – to have been born exactly when and where I was born. This way, baby. To be exactly who I am. I think it could have been grade school – but certainly by junior high, I became aware of feeling gratitude…and enjoying every little detail of every little thing around me. When my physiology gets turned around here and now get reversed to now and here – which is nowhere. Pardon the word soup, but I can be silly again, too.
By it’s very nature, mental illness is immaturity in action. Acting silly isn’t. The difference is presence. The difference is being childlike, not childish. I used to joke when people said something about entering their second childhood – that I’ve never left my first. Seriously. Never stop being childlike, delighted by every little detail of life.
Living with chronic illness is exhausting, but by far the worst illness I deal with on a daily basis is the OPD. OPD (Obnoxious Personality Disorder) and it’s symptoms are debilitating. When I am miserable, feel like life is not treating me fairly and God has abandoned me, I know where to go for help. I go to church. Right here, today, with Carolyn Myss. She is my spirit animal, and lucky for me, she’s got clues to spare.
And then I channel my inner Elizabeth Bigelow and remind myself what a privilege it is to be alive in the here and now, even if I don’t know how the technology works…
Okay. I’m like the Terminator – I’m ba-aaack…I won’t pull any punches here; the election results catapulted me into an even deeper depression than the gradual slide I had been in. A couple of people suggested that I seemed “kinda bummed.” I’m sure they will recover from my reaction. Let me be clear: I am not bummed. I’m devastated. Absolutely gutted. It’s not just the business of politics – it’s personal.
And I’ll get into some of the details of the day to day hell of the past week with you, but first, let me begin with the healing. Because I have not been able to sleep – or breathe well – I called my doctor yesterday. I decided, a bit late, that I need to go back on an antidepressant. Obviously I am struggling to cope with assholes. That’s what antidepressants are for. She offered me a prescription for a sleeping medication and I declined. They are all habit forming. I have habits. I have bad habits in fact. But I do not knowingly engage in new bad habits. I have enough old ones, thank you.
I have fond memories of my father patiently teaching me to play solitaire at a young age. I still play on my laptop or phone when I’m waiting somewhere, or sometimes even when I’m anxious. It relaxes me. Because I’ve been playing all my life, I rarely lose. Now there are many apps available to win money playing online. I struggle financially, so maybe I should consider playing solitaire for money. It’s not gonna happen. That’s called gambling. And gambling is a known addictive behavior. I have an addictive personality. I am never going to willingly engage in any addictive behavior. That’s called self care.
When I talk about self care (let’s do) I do not mean that I switch from coffee to herbal tea after noon (although I usually do that, too.) I mean that I do not engage in any behavior that risks my optimal health.
Some of you know that I was a roller skater until my forties. Not the kind you clip to your shoes we had as children, but the kind you invest real money in to have custom made. The kind Michael Jackson flew into Detroit to learn dance moves from. And yes, I was a token white person in that sport. I skated with Anita Baker at Detroit Roller Wheels before she had a recording contract. I have maintained since high school that it would have been an Olympic sport had it not been a black sport…but I digress.
When I do enjoy the bliss of deep, restorative sleep, I am often roller skating in my dreams. My heaven is paved with smooth wooden streets. I can’t begin to describe the freedom of being able to dance on skates, the sense of flying when you’re moving fast. The sense of floating when you’re moving slow. The trust of moving through air with your eyes closed being led through a dance. There were enough rinks in the Detroit metro area that you could drive from one adult dance session to another and skate continuously for hours any day of the week. And I did. It was my drug of choice. I also knew I could take my skates and travel alone anywhere in the country and meet other healthy-minded sober individuals (you can’t skate drunk) that I could feel safe with.
But once I had moved to northern rural Michigan I had to give up skating. There are no rinks nearby. I haven’t skated in almost 30 years. Would I try it now? Hell no. I used to love horseback riding. Probably not going to do that again this lifetime…never say never, as they say. I can say with certainty that I am never going bungee jumping. You get the idea.
So why in the name of self care would I vote for a fascist? Anyway, here we are. As it happens I didn’t really have much energy to deal with my reaction to that mess. That is going to take time and enormous discipline to sort through. My cat is hanging onto life by a thread at the moment. And my precious only child is in crisis with his alcoholism. It would be difficult enough to deal with were he not also living in my house. So now I’m dealing with an energy intruder who cannot seem to control his own behavior and is making my life crazy. Kicking him out means he has no safe place to stay. He becomes homeless. He’s broke. He is sick and not strong enough to work consistently. It has to be faced, and yes, I am strong enough to do it. Sadly, I’ve had ongoing experience with this all of my adult life with most of my family members. It is heartbreaking, which is the real reason I called the doctor yesterday. I was afraid I might be having a heart attack. It was anxiety. While I would give my life for my son, I won’t make a single compromise for his demons.
And so I have begun to work the 12 step program again. I have found an online Al-anon group so that I can attend meetings. I will get a sponsor, I will continue to meet weekly with a therapist. I will be diligent with self care.
This is the first morning in a couple weeks that I have woke without panic. My breathing is under control. I managed to get some sleep. I’m not shaking. The sense of dread is not completely gone, but I feel it dissipating. And now my inner warrior kicks in. Jesus, I can be a raving bitch. I’ve had to be, and I’m as good as it as I am at playing solitaire. But the only alternative to being her is to be more protective of my personal space moving forward, a lesson I could have sworn I had learned. But here we are.
Ooohh, man. I have been going through it. Some dark nights. So I suspect you have, too…’cause that’s how this mind meld thingy works…the past week has been intense. My cat seemed to be fading fast and I could not get a vet to help. My vet seemed to have fallen off the face of the planet. Other vets I called, half a dozen or so, could not get us in soon. They were referring me to an emergency clinic an hour and a half away. I was afraid the cat wouldn’t survive the trip. He panics in the car and goes into shock.
One receptionist admitted that they have been operating with one third their regular staff since the pandemic. They, like all medical services in the area – and all services, for that matter – are understaffed and overworked. The past three years have seen a tremendous boom in population in this area, as well as tourism. We are now experiencing “overtourism,” to use the new buzz word. So assistance just isn’t available, not quickly or nearby, anyway. Lately I find myself saying, “we are on our own out here.” But I see evidence of this happening all around the country. It feels like I’m standing on the beach of life watching the water rapidly pulling away from shore…and wondering what that means…
And I was triggered – big time. In a recent post I spoke about losing it with my son. But I seem to be all over the place emotionally in a way that very much feels like I’m right back in some adolescent hormonally-induced rage. What is going on?!
And so, in my panic (because that’s what this was) I did the only thing I could do – I started working the 12 step process and meditating. Now, as I’m sure you know, sitting still to meditate is almost impossible when you are so upset. And yet you need to get your breathing and heart rate under control. Stop the panic, interrupt the pattern. And once I was able to begin, just begin, to settle…whoosh. In comes inspiration. Inspire – ation. God as verb.
I will let you in on a little trick I’ve used for about 55 years or so now. It takes some time to get started. It takes EXACTLY as long as it takes for me to remember that I am not in control. AND ASK FOR HELP. That’s the trick – you have to ASK for help. Specifically, I begin reciting The Lord’s Prayer.
I think I was in high school when I first went to a metaphysical bookstore. It was the only store of it’s kind in the Detroit suburbs at the time, and it still exists today. I went looking for information on natural healing for my bleeding ulcers. I found so much more than I could have imagined. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was an actual portal to a new life. Mayflower Book Store in Berkley, Michigan: https://mayflowerbookshop.com/
That was where I discovered what those cards were that my friend bought me at a garage sale, bound in a rubber band with interesting drawings on them. They were tarot cards. And I bought a book called The Gnostic Gospels. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that we only ever need one prayer, and proceeds to recite The Lord’s Prayer. I remembered it from early days of church when I was little. When I used to hold onto the seat of the pew with both hands as hard as I could because I was afraid I would float out of my seat and get in trouble. Those huge, huge angels up in the rafters were singing to me and I wanted to sit up there with them.
I am not religious. I don’t like religion. I guess I’m not ready to forgive the millennium of atrocities it hasn’t taken responsibility for. I’m not that expanded yet. In fact, like Elizabeth Gilbert says, “I’m such a pagan.” But I am oh so very faithful. And like learning the tarot by observing the imagery come to life every day for many years, I have learned that The Lord’s Prayer encompasses any worldly concern you will ever have and transforms it – or you – into manageable information. Plain and simple language, like the plain and simple imagery of the tarot, that leads us right back to our divine imagination. Thy will be done. Phew…a greater intelligence, a higher consciousness, has got me. Contrary to all my innards screaming at me, I am, in fact, not alone here. And btw, I spent far too many years worrying about what anyone else thought about my complex beliefs and how they did or did not conform into societal expectations. I no longer assign power where it does not belong. No one owns the teachings that serve us, whether of Jesus or Buddha or the tarot or animals or nature. I speak them all. If you find something that works for you, do not let anyone hijack it from you.
I drove over an hour away last Friday to pick up medication for my beloved familiar. Within 24 hours he was a different cat. He is doing well; probably better than he has felt in a very long time. Dear little thing. Another close friendship isn’t faring as well, however. I lashed out at a friend in my anger and desperation last week. Yes, I was mired in grief posing as helplessness. Yes, she said something that felt insensitive. And we’ve established I can be quite verbally abusive when triggered. I wish there was a pill to fix this.
Unable to sleep, I am writing this at 3 a.m. In meditation only minutes ago I was offered healing, a little loosening…I can only hope she felt it also. I hope I will have the best words to say when we speak again.
I do know, just within the last few minutes, that all of this frustration and anger and grief has come to visit at the perfect time. It was waiting for the perfect storm to expose it so that it could be healed. I don’t have to be so brave anymore. On earth as it is in heaven is not religious hyperbole. It is real, here and now. I surrender. And I can rest.
He was a well educated professional. I was an unskilled hourly worker. I guess you could say he married below his station. In fact, he had a genius IQ and, like the movie character Little Man Tate, had his advanced degree by the age of nineteen. He went from college into an administrator position straight out of school. He was brilliant. But I was smart.
Within weeks of our getting married we were dealing with children in crisis. His dear daughter was being released from court-ordered drug rehab and he was excited to see her. He handed her the car keys and a wad of cash and told her to have fun with her friends. What a great Dad. I remember telling him, “I wouldn’t trade my smarts for yours for anything in the world. I hope your daughter survives to grow up. Meanwhile, what am I going to do with you for the the rest of my life?”
Like many unhappy couples, we primarily argued about money. Especially since we skipped silly little tasks like repairing the leaky roof in lieu of supporting the nearby casino. But if I brought this up he told me, “at least I have a real job.” I used to sing around the house, “why can’t you be like your big brother Bob – get a haircut and get a real job?!” Because I would make jokes about anything I couldn’t communicate any other way…a sort of last-ditch effort at making a point. From the abstract to the surreal I guess.
Just a few days ago a friend called to talk. She is in the grievous process of selling her home and filing for divorce after forty years of marriage. She stumbled upon his affair, apparently hidden for years at this point. Being in their 70’s now, I seriously doubt it’s his first. He’s always been rather distant. Emotionally unavailable. And, of course, we haven’t lived this long without having dealt with our share of hardship. I have watched for decades as she held that family together through thick and thin. Having lost her own parents early in life, she cared for his ornery, ungrateful mother through years of dementia with the patience of a saint. She nursed him back from the edge of death more than once, including donating an organ to save him. But he was preoccupied elsewhere. By divorcing, she’ll get half of everything, which is half of what she’d have if he’d died…and you wonder why women contemplate murder.
Let me make a monumentally long story short: I am dealing with the depression and angst of feeling like I have been stupid for the first 60 of my 70 years. Really – just downright, flat-out stupid. Trying to make relationships work with narcissists. The word familiar comes from family.
And part of this recent realization comes with the acknowledgement that I allowed my creativity to be sabotaged all of my adult life. In other words, I sabotaged it in deference to people pleasing. In a futile attempt at keeping my beautiful home and family together.
Like Camille Henrot, I did everything I could not to become an artist, and like Camille Henrot, I find art can help make sense of the world a little bit – or at least respect it’s nonsense. When I say respect, I mean like I respect the power of water, or nature. I mean respect like reverence for that which I find myself powerless to control.
“Oh love, bring every grief you’ve carried with you as a door you’ll walk right by / if you don’t stop to look with that loving heart and a troubled eye.”
Our troubles feel as if they are like stone, a compacted, impenetrable medium which will not allow us in. It’s time to “put my money where my mouth is…” so to speak. Time to show up, front and center, and face that stone inside, standing steadfast between me and my own liberation. I talk a good game, don’t I? All this wisdom about getting free. As if I had a clue.
When I am lost as I am this week, in the rock hard grief of my own making, I have few places I can turn. I can always turn to David Whyte. Ironically, I was introduced to him long ago by a friend I no longer have any contact with. She chose to stay in the comfortable captivity of her abusive marriage, and I had to stop pretending that I could be her supportive friend. If you read this journal once in a while, you’ll realize this theme has carried throughout the 13 years since I began here. I’ve gone no contact with more people than I have in my life anymore. Every single one has been a death I am mourning. In retrospect today, this seems an obvious theme. After all, I began this outlet as a means to help me process my divorce and separation from family, from everything I’d ever thought I wanted. To come up against that rock hard resistance and face the unknown.
C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying how shocked he was to realize that grief feels so like fear. There is good reason for that. Grief is the last doorway between us and our freedom, and we are terrified of our freedom. How, exactly, do we manage to be in the world, but not of it? Get back to me on that, won’t you, please?
It turns out that ignorance is never bliss; it’s really only ignorance. It also turns out that bliss was never the goal. It has always been awareness, whether we care to admit that or not. Bliss would be, well, blissfully easy by comparison. But awareness is how we get to freedom – which is our one and only job here. We like to pretend the god ate our homework. Yes, you read that right. So what is all this angst-ing about? Well, I have come up against the biggest boulder my heart has ever encountered, and I’m guessing you have one, too.
Since my teenage years, all of my relationships have been hard. I am hard. I have always been difficult to get along with. Something inside of me has always been as uncompromising as a boulder. I was the eldest of five children, and the scapegoat in a narcissistic family system. Yada, yada, yada…I married young. I got out as soon as I could, and I wasn’t going back. At the age of 24 I had my son, and he has been the light of my life. In many ways, my salvation. I don’t think I’d be alive today were it not for him, and I certainly wouldn’t be the person I am. He inspires me endlessly. But we are at odds right now, and it is breaking my heart. It has shaken me to my core.
Intellectually, I can explain everything. To tell the entire story, I have to begin with the health problems which impacted that pregnancy. I was always a nervous and thus scraggly kid. In high school I was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers. I struggled all of my young life to keep weight on. So I was considered medically malnourished when I became pregnant at 23, and I proceeded to lose 24 pounds. I gave birth to a healthy 9 pound, 6 ounce baby with teeth coming through his gums, but I left the hospital at just over 90 pounds. I’m 5′ 6″ tall. Perhaps because of this, he has always had some (miraculously mild) learning disabilities, despite an extraordinarily high I.Q.
During his first year in school he began to show behaviors that we would now recognize as autism. I took him to every doctor of every type that I could think of. We checked his eyesight, we checked his hearing, we checked his cognitive abilities. The doctors all told me exactly the same thing: this child is a genius. He is bored. With the wise counsel of some teacher friends we began a discipline of working through a daily checklist. I would write and draw it out on a blank sketchbook page at night, and he would work through it after school the next day. He had to complete it before he was allowed to play. It always included 2 or 3 light chores and 2-3 fun, creative activities. It always included Hug Your Mother (because I’m not above manipulation.) Then, an hour before bed we sat together and read a story or watched a favorite cartoon while I massaged his feet with a grounding oil, usually sandalwood. This routine was working beautifully. To this day, when he becomes stressed he will often create a checklist.
I am telling you this now because he has been struggling again. As mentioned recently, he is quite depressed. The aftermath of the recent natural disasters seems to have impacted him deeply. He is a highly sensitive person. But I, too, am struggling terribly as a direct result of interacting with him, in his mental and emotional distress. And because I am literally the only sober person he knows, I’m the sole voice of reason in his life right now. I must make mental health the priority of our lives.
And yesterday, I suddenly felt terribly helpless. I was consumed with fear, and I blew it. He came out of left field touting some wild conspiracy theory about the corrupt government having created the weather disaster and being out to get us all – and I lost my shit. It isn’t even that I necessarily disagree with everything he was saying, but I absolutely cannot – cannot – function from that perspective. It is mired in fear. It is entirely divisive. And it is utterly hopeless. Talk about a conspiracy!
I don’t know that I have ever screamed that loud before in my life. I screamed at the top of my lungs – at him. I told him he was dead wrong about so much of what he has recently adopted to believe. And in no uncertain terms I told him that he is subscribing to cult behavior, and that I am afraid for his sanity. I frightened him, and I frightened myself.
And so, shaken as I was yesterday, I must ask myself some very tough questions. Do I want to defend my own personal beliefs at the cost of anyone else’s freedom, including my sons’? What if he and I become estranged and never speak, as the current politics has divided so many families? Can I live with that? Are my convictions that important? Are yours?
Do I have other options here, besides finding “the truth” of the situation? Of course. Firstly, I recognize that if I am not experiencing peace, I have given away my sanity. Somewhere in the hours/days/weeks leading up to this blowup I have assigned meaning somewhere it doesn’t belong. If every upset is a setup (and it is,) I bought into somebody else’s agenda. Or in this case, depression. I picked it right up because it’s a familiar habit. And if I picked it up psychically, so did my empathic son. We can put it down just as fast. I’m not going to give assholes my vote this election. My pussy is not up for grabs. Neither is my mind. Out, demons, out! Here’s to our better angels.
Both my son and I lost our sense of humor – and perspective! After all, that’s what depression is. I fell into that bad habit, and so did he. Now I want my funny son back. I want my kind, intelligent son back. I’m thinking that screaming at him isn’t the best approach. But I’ve been holding on too tightly. Too much fear bottled up inside. It is no coincidence that I am having a flare-up of asthma symptoms. I have been holding my breath. I’m done with that. You want to see what created weather looks like? Watch out for that boulder rolling downhill. Tomorrow’s forecast is warm and sunny.
“You too have travelled from so far away to be here, once reluctant and now as solid and as here and as willing to be touched as everything you have found.” Thank you, David Whyte.
“I need a God who thinks I’m funny.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
Me too, Liz, me too. Gilbert’s relationship with consciousness, or God, is very similar to mine. And only recently, through a Buddhist friend, have I realized that we also have much in common with some basic Buddhist tenets, mainly that a human incarnation is a rare and extraordinary occurrence. To be profoundly revered. That is not to say easy. As Liz also reminds me, “Even a good life is hard.”
I woke with a migraine a few days ago. I had blissfully forgotten how completely debilitating they are. I used to get migraines chronically. They stole days out of every week. The leading neurologist treating me began with new, cutting edge migraine treatments and eventually resorted to Dilaudid (generic morphine). Administered 20 minutes after Compazine for nausea, so that I didn’t waste the morphine. And it never once took away the migraine. My body was screaming at me.
Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk wrote The Body Keeps the Score, and he likewise knows, “the mind hides it.” When I was having chronic migraines in my 40’s and 50’s I was desperately trying to find something – anything – to relieve the pain. But there was something seriously wrong. As in, my life had gone flaming dumpster fire awry. I was dying.
Liz Gilbert is right about something else – the closer we get to living our true self imperfectly, the more displeasing we are to the world. I was this many years old before I didn’t care how the world finds me. Alive would be good.
Knowing this and doing it is much easier said than done. Those old childhood habits are deep and strong. I do so want you to like me. In fact, that inner child in me needs you to like me. My life depends on it. I think you must know something I don’t – and I’m waiting for you to share that with me so I can get on with life.
The task here is to become as generous with myself as I am with you. Maybe – just maybe – I know something. Maybe my body knows it even if my mind doesn’t grasp it yet. Maybe I have always known it. Maybe it is my core. And maybe the real issue – where the healing will occur – is in my being more greedy than needy. Greedy for my own company, my own council. Greedy with my solitude. Or as I used to tell my self-righteous, narcissistic, fundamentalist family when they would call me crazy: I choose MY crazy.
I choose MY crazy, not yours, nor anyone else’s I might momentarily assign authority over my wellbeing. I get to decide what it means to be sane and well. I get to choose peace. I’ve got this. No soliciting here. Go away. I’m finally becoming very greedy. I cannot wait for some other person I’ve deemed worthy to honor me; it isn’t in their best interest. It seems their God has no sense of humor. Sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.
From this new practice of greed there are no longer many people I will give access to my time and attention. Maybe because I’m older now; being needy seems frivolous. If you are trustworthy, you will defend my solitude, and I yours. And Elizabeth Gilbert is our spirit animal.
A Painterly Home 