I'm listening to an episode of This American Life about a man who goes to Florida for four months to take care of his mother and brother. I probably blogged about it before - this is the second time I've heard it and...it's just...
The narrator's parents divorced when he was young. He and one brother were raised with their father; his mother remarried and had another son who grew up with her. The father worked for NASA and occasionally lunched with Nobel Laureates; the mother's second husband was a drug-smuggling gangster who was killed by his associates. One of the narrator's brothers went away to study classical violin; the other went to court for multiple DUIs. Josh, the narrator, spends his time trying to restore his mother and brother's lives to manageability and figuring out how it got so out of control in the first place.
What's so stunning to me, besides how easy it is to get keep getting sucked deeper and deeper into the downward spiral, is how foreign Josh finds his family's life in Florida. Was his childhood air truly so rarefied that he didn't know people live like that? Maybe he assumed that those things happen to other people. I think that's what stands out the most to me - how blown away Josh is that his mother just continues to acclimate to living conditions that continue to degrade - when to me it all seems so easy to understand. Too easy.
To be fair, Josh does say over and over that he wished he'd been told when things started to get so out of hand so he could have helped out - he doesn't sound like a stupid or snobby kid. Just a remarkably charmed one, I guess.
Maybe what makes me so tired all the time is straining against the downward pull. I've seen how damned easy it would be for me to let myself slide down the slippery slope. What could I do with all the energy I spend not giving in to the negativity I do manage to push away? With all the energy I use pushing past the urge to drink? I remember hearing someone describe recovery as walking in the ocean against the current. How much further could I go if I could just get out of the water?
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Who am I anyway?
One of those things I've always tried to determine is who I really am, at my core. There are a lot of things I'd like to believe about myself (intelligent, compassionate), a lot of things I've come to accept about myself (procrastinator, pack-rat), and a lot of things I think are true but wonder if maybe I could be doing more to combat (depression, low energy).
For example, at my most authentic self - am I night person? I think I am, but on weekends I love getting an early start on the day. Do I believe that rich people should pay higher taxes? Well, yeah, because they can afford it, but they worked to make all that money (or were lucky enough to be born into it) so why shouldn't they keep it? Do I want to be a parent or do I just want to keep my options open? Am I sucker who fell for the lie of financial security and the need for health insurance that's too afraid to follow my bliss? Do I believe in a higher power or not? Do I really like reality television but hate myself for it?
My best answer is that today, my beliefs/preferences are A, B, and C, but tomorrow they may be X, Y, and Z, and I'll have to deal with that then. I've never been able to pin myself down - all I can do is look at my patterns. But isn't integrity about being true to yourself and your ideals? I don't even know what mine are!
Yesterday I read this article about a man's experience on a meditation retreat wherein he battled self-loathing so intense it changed his life. The part that struck me follows:
A second aspect of the practice, though, was even more important, and that was seeing the self-hatred for what it really is, not what it is conventionally thought of as being. At first, I interpreted the feelings I was having according to the conventional geology of the self. This is what I felt "deep down." This is was what I "really" believed, despite all the rationale I'd proffered to myself and to others. But that entire geology is a fiction -- deep down inside what? All that was actually present in my experience were different beliefs. One belief (gay is bad) had the character -- the "feeling tone" in Buddhist language -- of being long-held. Another belief (gay is good) didn't, even though I knew it made more sense, and had led me to more happiness and more spiritual capacity. But the former belief wasn't really "deeper" or truer. It was merely its character -- its feeling -- that was being interpreted as "deep."
This was such a critical turning point for me. Of course the guilt felt "deeper" -- it's had thirty years of constant reinforcement, as compared with just a few years of acceptance and understanding. But the "self" in which it felt "deeper" within is itself just a label for a million conditioned phenomena, woven together by consciousness. The self is like a bundle of sticks taken from elsewhere -- "we" are neither any individual stick, nor the string that ties them together. And what you discover in meditation is: there is never any time at which the bundle as a whole does anything. It's always one stick or another. A desire. A fear. A thought. Some will feel deep, some will feel shallow -- but those are just sensations, nothing more.
Have I been digging for phantoms this whole time? Trying to find the core stick in a bundle with no center? Maybe I've been Buddhist all along and just didn't know it!
My struggle with Buddhism involves my firmly entrenched attachment to the "I" that loves John Taylor, Winnie-the-Pooh, and yellow cake with chocolate icing. I like having a couple of boxes of souvenirs of my past to remind me of things I've seen and done and been. I like my overloaded bookshelves. I can't imagine what it would be like to detach from all that makes me me even though I understand that my wanting is the source of my pain. Isn't it also the source of my pleasure?
These are my most recent deep thoughts. I'm now in the throes of Excedrin and Friday afternoon; don't expect anything too weighty anytime soon.
For example, at my most authentic self - am I night person? I think I am, but on weekends I love getting an early start on the day. Do I believe that rich people should pay higher taxes? Well, yeah, because they can afford it, but they worked to make all that money (or were lucky enough to be born into it) so why shouldn't they keep it? Do I want to be a parent or do I just want to keep my options open? Am I sucker who fell for the lie of financial security and the need for health insurance that's too afraid to follow my bliss? Do I believe in a higher power or not? Do I really like reality television but hate myself for it?
My best answer is that today, my beliefs/preferences are A, B, and C, but tomorrow they may be X, Y, and Z, and I'll have to deal with that then. I've never been able to pin myself down - all I can do is look at my patterns. But isn't integrity about being true to yourself and your ideals? I don't even know what mine are!
Yesterday I read this article about a man's experience on a meditation retreat wherein he battled self-loathing so intense it changed his life. The part that struck me follows:
A second aspect of the practice, though, was even more important, and that was seeing the self-hatred for what it really is, not what it is conventionally thought of as being. At first, I interpreted the feelings I was having according to the conventional geology of the self. This is what I felt "deep down." This is was what I "really" believed, despite all the rationale I'd proffered to myself and to others. But that entire geology is a fiction -- deep down inside what? All that was actually present in my experience were different beliefs. One belief (gay is bad) had the character -- the "feeling tone" in Buddhist language -- of being long-held. Another belief (gay is good) didn't, even though I knew it made more sense, and had led me to more happiness and more spiritual capacity. But the former belief wasn't really "deeper" or truer. It was merely its character -- its feeling -- that was being interpreted as "deep."
This was such a critical turning point for me. Of course the guilt felt "deeper" -- it's had thirty years of constant reinforcement, as compared with just a few years of acceptance and understanding. But the "self" in which it felt "deeper" within is itself just a label for a million conditioned phenomena, woven together by consciousness. The self is like a bundle of sticks taken from elsewhere -- "we" are neither any individual stick, nor the string that ties them together. And what you discover in meditation is: there is never any time at which the bundle as a whole does anything. It's always one stick or another. A desire. A fear. A thought. Some will feel deep, some will feel shallow -- but those are just sensations, nothing more.
Have I been digging for phantoms this whole time? Trying to find the core stick in a bundle with no center? Maybe I've been Buddhist all along and just didn't know it!
My struggle with Buddhism involves my firmly entrenched attachment to the "I" that loves John Taylor, Winnie-the-Pooh, and yellow cake with chocolate icing. I like having a couple of boxes of souvenirs of my past to remind me of things I've seen and done and been. I like my overloaded bookshelves. I can't imagine what it would be like to detach from all that makes me me even though I understand that my wanting is the source of my pain. Isn't it also the source of my pleasure?
These are my most recent deep thoughts. I'm now in the throes of Excedrin and Friday afternoon; don't expect anything too weighty anytime soon.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Waking up in now
I dreamed (dreamt?) about an ex last night. Not a big surprise - I took a journal with me over the weekend and after writing in it, turned back some pages and read. About him. And how I showed up so he could break my heart a second time. Seven years ago.
Seven years ago I was working at the Enterprise Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in part by the man who built Columbia, MD (and Ed Norton's step-grandfather or some such thing). I was discovering Fark and the 4um, which introduced me to some of the best friends I've ever had. I was disentangling myself (so I thought) from the most intense relationship of my adult life (to that point) with a man who was more soul-twin than soul-mate. I had tried dating some new guys but when the old one presented himself, it was hard to resist.
I don't know if it's like this for everyone, but dream emotions stay with me into the following day, clinging like the threads caterpillars stretch across paths through the woods or webs spiders spin between the car and my deck railing. And just as hard to shake off. I remember telling Pete that I'd had a dream wherein I was pissed off at him and asked him to forgive me if I tried to pick a fight.
When I read my old journals, they seem like the rantings of a teenager - everything is SO big and SO not like anything I've ever felt and SO...whatever. I was 32 seven years ago - old enough to have earned a little perspective. I hadn't felt anything like panic in the week since the end of my long-term relationship but started to get a little anxious after reading my journal. Nothing in my life seemed to last very long - social circles, jobs, relationships, etc. OMG! Alone again! What am I going to do? My life read like a series of choppy episodes rather than a coherent narrative and now here I am again - except where am I?
I am in the same job where I've for six years, in the same house where I've been for five, with the same cat I've had for - yikes, almost eight years? We're no longer dating but Pete and I still have a relationship, as evidenced by my urge to call him as soon as I heard Kyle Busch had been knocked out of the Cup race early only to find he'd already texted me about somebody finally winning the Nationwide race (somebody other than Busch). I've been going to meetings for 12 years and will keep doing so; I've been participating with my coven for four years; I've been taking hatha yoga and exploring a more Yoga (all eight limbs)-centric spiritual path for a year and a half.
I don't have to anticipate my whole world spinning out of orbit - I don't have to allow it to. Yes, this is an ending and thus a beginning, but not necessarily of everything I know. There's no need to go running back to my past in search of something that feels familiar. There's no need to panic. Everything is okay here and now and will continue to be so as long as I keep doing the next right thing.
And today the next right thing is to leave the sticky feelings from past in the past rather than allow them to get all over now. And maybe make myself feel better about me by re-reading some of this LJ, where backspace and delete make things look much less chaotic.
Seven years ago I was working at the Enterprise Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in part by the man who built Columbia, MD (and Ed Norton's step-grandfather or some such thing). I was discovering Fark and the 4um, which introduced me to some of the best friends I've ever had. I was disentangling myself (so I thought) from the most intense relationship of my adult life (to that point) with a man who was more soul-twin than soul-mate. I had tried dating some new guys but when the old one presented himself, it was hard to resist.
I don't know if it's like this for everyone, but dream emotions stay with me into the following day, clinging like the threads caterpillars stretch across paths through the woods or webs spiders spin between the car and my deck railing. And just as hard to shake off. I remember telling Pete that I'd had a dream wherein I was pissed off at him and asked him to forgive me if I tried to pick a fight.
When I read my old journals, they seem like the rantings of a teenager - everything is SO big and SO not like anything I've ever felt and SO...whatever. I was 32 seven years ago - old enough to have earned a little perspective. I hadn't felt anything like panic in the week since the end of my long-term relationship but started to get a little anxious after reading my journal. Nothing in my life seemed to last very long - social circles, jobs, relationships, etc. OMG! Alone again! What am I going to do? My life read like a series of choppy episodes rather than a coherent narrative and now here I am again - except where am I?
I am in the same job where I've for six years, in the same house where I've been for five, with the same cat I've had for - yikes, almost eight years? We're no longer dating but Pete and I still have a relationship, as evidenced by my urge to call him as soon as I heard Kyle Busch had been knocked out of the Cup race early only to find he'd already texted me about somebody finally winning the Nationwide race (somebody other than Busch). I've been going to meetings for 12 years and will keep doing so; I've been participating with my coven for four years; I've been taking hatha yoga and exploring a more Yoga (all eight limbs)-centric spiritual path for a year and a half.
I don't have to anticipate my whole world spinning out of orbit - I don't have to allow it to. Yes, this is an ending and thus a beginning, but not necessarily of everything I know. There's no need to go running back to my past in search of something that feels familiar. There's no need to panic. Everything is okay here and now and will continue to be so as long as I keep doing the next right thing.
And today the next right thing is to leave the sticky feelings from past in the past rather than allow them to get all over now. And maybe make myself feel better about me by re-reading some of this LJ, where backspace and delete make things look much less chaotic.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Sadness
Because I know some family reads this and because it is my life...my boyfriend and I broke up last weekend.
It's not that we don't love each other because we do very much. It's about me not being happy in a long-distance relationship and not seeing a way around our current long-distance situation. He can't move; I don't want to live in Toledo; there's no compromise.
It's hard for me to stay emotionally available to someone when it hurts so much to watch him drive away; we're only seeing each other once a month now and it's only going to get more expensive. There's other stuff too, but I don't want to get into the gory details.
The bottom line is that I've been thinking about this for a while and needed to share it with him. There's never a good time - the phone sucks as does the fact that doing it in person means someone has to drive home mulling it over. I can't dwell on it too much because I'm very weepy. I'm sad. We both are.
I actually wrote this on Monday, I think, and as of this hour I'm mostly okay. Still sad, not as weepy, and he and I have communicated without animosity several times. This weekend I'm off to the Himalayan Institute for a meditation workshop and it couldn't be more timely.
It's not that we don't love each other because we do very much. It's about me not being happy in a long-distance relationship and not seeing a way around our current long-distance situation. He can't move; I don't want to live in Toledo; there's no compromise.
It's hard for me to stay emotionally available to someone when it hurts so much to watch him drive away; we're only seeing each other once a month now and it's only going to get more expensive. There's other stuff too, but I don't want to get into the gory details.
The bottom line is that I've been thinking about this for a while and needed to share it with him. There's never a good time - the phone sucks as does the fact that doing it in person means someone has to drive home mulling it over. I can't dwell on it too much because I'm very weepy. I'm sad. We both are.
I actually wrote this on Monday, I think, and as of this hour I'm mostly okay. Still sad, not as weepy, and he and I have communicated without animosity several times. This weekend I'm off to the Himalayan Institute for a meditation workshop and it couldn't be more timely.
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