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Quality and Quantity

March 15, 2015 //
2

I’ve got my dark moments, and certainly I have occasional doubts that ‘it’ is ‘worth it’ at all; it is the struggle that still fuels so much of my writing. Emotions can be intense, unexpected, and they cover a grand spectrum of human experience, so having a few that are unpleasant seems a given. While those things are what they are, I appreciate life, generally, and actually hope to live a very long time; I’ve often said I’d like to be around for 2083…I’d be 120. That’s a lot of living. Years and years of living in fact, surely qualifying as ‘a long time’. It seems doable, given ideal conditions; the oldest person living today is getting pretty close to that 120 mark, herself, and reportedly people have lived longer. As goals go, it’s hard to beat ‘live a long time’.

With potentially another 70 or so years to go, it changes the face of my perspective on living…I spent about a decade as a child, and another 10 years honing my skills to be recognizably adult (although lacking in life experience)…finally reaching 21, which wasn’t of particular value or legitimate significance; I was already a soldier, already unhappily married, already able to drink, already owned a car and a house, already voting – and still just as likely to be discouraged from using, or prohibited from having, the decision-making power of autonomy over reproduction and sexual values – because that’s how women are often treated, regardless of age, but most especially as young adult women. I spent my 20s rather wastefully racking up experiences of a variety of sorts without any particular reflection or personal growth. I took a lot of damage. I inflicted some of it on myself.

"Broken" 14" x 18" acrylic and mixed media with glow.

“Broken” 14″ x 18″ acrylic and mixed media with glow.

I entered my 30s exiting a violent marriage, without much to show for it besides a small number of very special possessions I would cling to with great care for decades to come, only to see some of the most precious of those rare positive mementos lost to the destructive force, or disregard, of others farther along on life’s journey. (Attachment is a losing game.)

I fell in love for the first time in my 30s, and although I recognized the experience as being significant, it didn’t last. It likely wouldn’t have lasted even if I had had the skills to nurture it at the time, it was built on a shaky foundation.

Time passes. I’ve grown. Changed. Built on what seems to be working. Torn down a lot of what wasn’t working at all. I’m in a very different place than I once was…and still the journey continues.  I have a lot less to show for 52 years than many people do (and more than others). I don’t own a home of my own. I don’t own a car of my own. I am not prepared for retirement in any adequate fashion. 100% of everything I own at this point in my life will fit in a modest sized bedroom – what isn’t furniture fits in a closet, if the art is hanging on the walls. Most of my possessions are paintings, or books, and a few boxes of precious crystal and porcelain breakables that are for now put away for safety. It hasn’t always been this way, and when I am not mindful of the risk of ‘second dart suffering’ related to attachment and loss, contemplating the losses over time carries quite an emotional punch. My brain is willing to attack me on this tender spot; I have sometimes chosen poorly, and I am living the outcome of those choices.

I am walking my own path; sometimes it seems clear, sometimes less so.

I am walking my own path; sometimes it seems clear, sometimes less so.

I am not where I want to be in life. On the other hand… I’ve got 70 years or so to get there, and I’m in a better place from which to move forward. 70 years to understand what matters most to me. 70 years to be fitter, wiser, healthier, calmer. 70 years to learn to love more skillfully, and to invest in growth. 70 years to make better choices. 70 years to build, to grow, to change… 70 years to practice. The saying is ‘practice makes perfect’ – what am I perfecting? What do I want of my life? This is not a question anyone can answer for me, and it has been a grave mistake in judgment in past moments of ennui, hurt, or chaos, to abdicate my role, or to compromise, in making the choices about what that desired life looks like for me.

Building the path as I walk it.

Building the path as I walk it; how else? No one knows my journey like I do…

I’m feeling some better this morning, though I slept badly. I’ll nap later, perhaps. I’ll spend the day doing laundry, preparing for my camping trip – if I go, the ‘last minute’ preparations [for me] happen today. If I find I am too sick to go, I will have spent a chill fun day playing with my camping gear – I don’t see that it is really any different from if I were a kid playing with any other sort of toys, housebound with a head cold on a rainy day. 🙂  I am hopeful that I’ll still be going camping – it’s the Vernal Equinox, missing out is kind of … well… missing out; there’s only one each year. This camping trip is a bit more than a weekend; 4 nights, 4 days, and a chance to meditate at length and at leisure, and to consider what I want of my life. (The future is here, and it’s always a good time to choose more wisely about the future than I did in the past.)

More questions than answers, and seeking illumination with a beginner's mind...

More questions than answers, and seeking illumination with a beginner’s mind…

This is the basic question I will be considering on this trip – in case you want to take it for a test drive, yourself: – If I could know with certainty that I will be living another 70 years, am I content with the life I am living right now? If not, what will I change to live the life I most want to live? What qualities of my day-to-day experience are precious to me? What do I change to experience more of those things? Yep. Fundamentally it the same question I have been asking throughout 2015; what do I want of my life? It is one question that simply isn’t ever about anyone but me. Life isn’t a bus ride, it’s more like a solo hike. The will, the direction, the motive power, and the resources over time, are mine. The choices? Also mine. I enjoy sharing my life with love and lovers…this, though, is my journey; I am the cartographer, the map is of my own making, the destination, too, must be of my choosing, sharing some portion of the journey does not change that.

The map is not the world...but the journey may be the destination.

The map is not the world…but the journey may be the destination.

Today is a very good day to live my life on my own terms. Isn’t it always? Today is a good day to treat the world well, while finding my own way. Today is a good day for good-natured acceptance of the humanity of others, and to be content that their decision-making is likely to differ from my own. Today is a good day for good self-care, and healthy indulgence of things that feel good – and do no harm to others. Today is a good day to be the person I most want to be – when I can – and to dust off my knees when I stumble, and keep going. Today is a good day to choose my own path, and to walk it. Today is a good day to change my world.

Is enlightenment found in embracing contentment in this precious moment?

Seeking illumination, I am content to find lightness of being.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Big 5, Uncategorized, women, Words

In Brief, In Briefs

January 17, 2015 //
0

I’m still lounging in my sleepwear, and it’s actually 8:00 am. I succeeded in sleeping in – and a good thing, because my emotions and my physical pain kept me up quite late. There’s nothing like stress, hormones, and pain to illustrate all my very worst qualities as a human being: easily frustrated, childishly attached to being comforted, emotional, needy, demanding, inflexible, irritable, unapproachable, resentful, baggage laden, and capable of losing all perspective in a moment. This human primate thing is not so easy as it seems…at least not if I am wanting to be the best that these raw materials allow.

This morning I woke with this headache continuing from yesterday, and through the tears (yes, sufficiently painful to cause tears in the absence of other emotion-causing stimulus) I took time to be grateful for something pretty obvious; I don’t have this headache every day. That’s something. I take a moment and try to apply the same practice to other frustrations, other things I am ‘going without’ or just no longer have in my experience these days, that I continue to be attached to, and to yearn for.  I’m grateful that I ever did have those feelings, and experiences. I appreciate and value the memories that linger.

This is not the most joyful place I’ve been in life. Facing a mid-life health concern, having my own experience – companionship, love, sharing; none of these things actually change one thing that is real and true in all this. I am having my own experience. There will always be elements of my experience I can’t easily share, or verbalize. There will always be the limitation that others are having their own experience, as well, and my words will be filtered through their understanding of the world, and the context of their experience. There will probably also always be elements of my experience that are best not shared at all – that’s been a given all along. It’s one of the most difficult things about having this particular TBI, or of being a trauma survivor; most people don’t try to share on the level I default to, and most people do not want to have a visceral understanding of some kinds of pain. I am alone with my words. A lot. At some point, that has to be okay.

My TBI complicates things, and sometimes in a very unexpected way. I’ve been feeling incredibly discontent lately, less supported than I ‘expected to’, lonely, sexually unsatisfied, emotionally isolated, frustrated, and disconnected in my relationships… I miss a particular time period in a valued romantic relationship (which one would not be relevant, the experience is similar across all of them, to varying degrees). I miss “that year” together, with the intensity of our affection, the continuous good-natured camaraderie, the close emotional bond, the driven heat of sex-all-the-damned-time – and feeling well and truly loved, satisfied, cared for, nurtured, valued… it was fucking fantastic. There’s never been another year like it in my life, before or since – even in the relationship I share with that lover, now. I noticed it at the time, and I valued it greatly. I regularly attempted to express my appreciation and gratitude… and to my later great disadvantage (I realized during the night), his response was to assure me I deserved to be treated so well, and that he always would, and further that I ought not settle for less, ever. I wonder if, at the time, he had any idea that he would be treating me less well over time, himself? I recognized how spectacularly special that time was, and the wonderful way he loved and cared for me. I regret that I didn’t understand his polite refusal to be complimented on it had the potential to set my expectations of the future of love. It’s not fair to either of us that I yearn so much for a moment in love’s life cycle of unsustainable intensity. I’m sure it was a good time for him, too. No time machine. That time is not now.

Here I am now. Love is. That’s a pretty big deal. There are still things I want out of love that I don’t have right now. That is what it is. I suppose I will likely always feel that way. Realistically, if I never had sex ever again… I’ve had more than most people, some of it has been extraordinary. Same with love – if I were bereft of love’s warmth tomorrow, I have at least known love. Romantic promises and hyperbole probably don’t trip everyone up the way they tripped me up…my broken brain got in my way; I did not understand those promises were not ‘real’, only beautiful words of love.

Today I will have breakfast with a friend I’ve been missing, and converse about the things going on in our ‘now’. I won’t need to pretty up the details – he’s the sort of friend I’ve always been able to be entirely frank with, and he’s always there. He’s been a friend since before the relationships of my heart’s landscape now even existed, and has context on who I am over time, and how I’ve grown. When we hang out, I walk away feeling more aware of how far I’ve come, and wholly accepted. It’s never been about sex between us, and it’s good to be able to talk those things over with someone who doesn’t have any potential to feel hurt by it. If you have such a friend – cherish them. You may need the warmth of their good company later on. Later I will ride the train home, and think about all the sex, all the lovers… and the awareness that there is life beyond sex, much of which I’ve not had to explore; most of my experience is sexual in some way. I’d like to find my way to a point on the journey where sex just doesn’t matter, doesn’t drive needs, doesn’t influence my actions or emotions – for now, even the idea of sex tends to feel emotionally compelling, and something more or less on the order of ‘everything that matters’, because for now, it seems to matter so terribly much that without those experiences, I sort of wonder what the point is?

The path isn't straight, the destination isn't obvious, but the journey must continue.

The path isn’t straight, the destination isn’t obvious, but the journey must continue.

Today is a good day to explore the unknown within. Today is a good day to talk with a friend. Today is a good day to wander, eyes open, on strange paths. Today is a good day…to change.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

It’s Nothing Like That Other Thing

January 13, 2015 //
1

I started the morning with a headache. I’m sure it will pass. My brain feels a little sluggish and foggy today; it was very late when I actually fell asleep, and I woke earnestly wanting the alarm to go off later…much later. I’m not bitching. I’m hopeful that at some point I will have that quality of deep sleep on a weekend morning that carries me on wings of pure restfulness until I wake, and finding myself so groggy right now manages to be a reminder that I am capable of deep sleep. My fingertips feel cold. This morning it reminds me that the temperature in my room is once again balanced for better sleep, and fairly chilly first thing when I get up as a result. I’m okay with that, too.

Headache and all, actually, today feels okay so far. I feel okay. The gray cloud of uneased loneliness seems to have lifted – and no surprise, I suppose, considering I spent a good many minutes after I retired last night crying; unreservedly and wholeheartedly grieving what may be lost along the way. Just that. To have some moment, some experience, of such sweetness and love – any such – and feel it slip away over time, or simply be…done…those are some very challenging experiences for me. I am still learning to accept some very basic truths about life – that lovely ‘this too shall pass’ aphorism cuts a very different way when considered in the context of some profoundly wonderful thing…and it’s no less true. Change is. I didn’t pass judgment on my sorrow, and I didn’t make excuses, or criticize my need to grieve life’s losses over time. I accepted in that moment that I was feeling profound sadness, and let that experience unfold. I cared for myself, and tended my injured heart, and I didn’t stuff my big emotions into a tiny box.

Just about the time my tears had dried, and I was meditating calmly and feeling accepting and content, my traveling partner checked in on me; it’s been a difficult bit of time, together, and he is more sensitive than most to the ebb and flow of my emotions, it can be hard to endure the intensity up close. We cuddled for a time, and I felt safe and secure nestled in his arms. I felt loved. It’s a powerful love that we share… It may not ‘be the same’ right now as it ‘once was’, but won’t that always be true, regardless? I live ‘now’…and ‘once was’ is not now, ever. It’s really that simple. This morning I woke feeling centered, and understanding more that there is so much to be enjoyed about right now… there are so many nuances to love and to loving… if things stayed the same, however good that might be, how much of what love has to offer would I miss out on?

I made some different choices to take care of me over the past few days, and they’ve been good choices, based on the outcome over time. Initial results don’t always seem so promising…but there again, maybe that’s because although change is, change is not always comfortable. I feel good today. I feel balanced. I feel the results of taking care of me….even grieving what isn’t can have some value, after all, it helped me get on through to what is.  In my own experience, being nearly always feels more fulfilling than yearning. I wasn’t helping myself out, being stuck and waiting for someone to help me out of the muck; I had my hands on a rope ladder of my own making, and all I needed to do was climb. There are verbs involved.

Today is a good day to take another step on this amazing journey. Today is a good day to remember that kindness begins with how I treat myself – and so do respect, consideration, compassion, and love. Today is a good day to remember the effect of incremental change over time, and to understand that however small one single step may seem to be as a singular experience, taken as a whole the journey goes many many miles, and every individual step is utterly necessary to complete it. Today is a good day to continue the journey.

One step at a time...

One step at a time…

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Categories Free Will, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women

Some Restrictions May Apply

January 10, 2015 //
0

Love is wonderful. Life is fairly amazing as experiences go. We are, however, imperfect mortal human primates, made as much of flaws and bad decision-making as we are of ‘star stuff’. This human experience is complicated. In every moment of misery, I try to hold on to something I find to be true about suffering, which is that the intensity of suffering tends to be a fair indicator of the magnitude of joy I am also capable of feeling. Some days that’s not much in the ‘something to hold on to’ department, but paired with ‘this too shall pass’ it’s generally enough to get by on, in a bad moment.

This morning I raise my mug in wry appreciation for the misery that woke me. I’m grateful that my traveling partner was awake, and there with a warm hug, and a hot latte. I woke feeling bereft, cut off, lonely…’lonely’ doesn’t really do the emotion that woke me justice. It was the loneliness of the friend standing by as the person they yearn for talks about ‘finding someone just like you’. It was the loneliness of the ‘tween who wants with so much hunger…and hasn’t yet become woman enough to be interesting romantically. It was the loneliness of sleeping alone, of waking alone, of being alone…and wanting intimacy and connection and companionship so much more than solitude. It was the loneliness of love lost, and the loneliness of the realization that what had been found wasn’t love at all. It was the loneliness of being ignored, or being forgotten. It was the loneliness of being unpopular. It was the loneliness of walking away. I woke feeling every lonely moment I have ever known, simultaneously delivered as a single waking moment, a sort of distilled essence of loneliness. The power of it was horrific. I woke stunned and emotionally immobilized long enough to take my morning medication, and try to go back to bed, uncertain what else to do. I felt ‘coated in distance’.  I pulled the covers over me, made my body comfortable, took a breath and relaxed to return to sleep and… and then I cried. I cried for every lonely moment I’d ever felt that I didn’t have tears for at the time. My heart melted, and it broke, and I cried until no more tears would come. I am clearly not going to be going back to sleep.

Thoughts of coffee differ from actual coffee.

Thoughts of coffee differ from actual coffee. It’s strange how intensely real thoughts can seem.

I finally woke up enough, some minutes beyond the crying, to realize that just laying there was pretty pointless, and, well… coffee. I got up and went first to my traveling partner, rather reassuringly relaxing in the living room and reading his email, sipping his morning coffee, looking for all the world like a man having a nice morning, in a world that is…just fine. He asked me how I’m doing, and I said it simply enough, without baggage or drama, “I woke feeling lonely and weird.” I accepted the offered hug, and he held me for the rest of our lives – well, no, actually just for some moments of lovely warmth and comfort, but it felt good – reassuring, safe, and comforting. By the time I sat down at my keyboard, with my latte, my heart was already feeling calmer, and the loneliness I woke to was receding. I have to wonder…how deeply can I connect to someone, how intimately close can I be with another human being, how vast is my capacity to love – if the loneliness that woke me is something I am able to feel, at all – and not only to feel, but to endure, and survive? Wow. I am eager to find my way to that connected intimate place.

Loneliness is a painful emotion to experience, and one that I find difficult to discuss, or to ease. I don’t often feel it so intensely; I enjoy my own company, greatly. For so many years my ability to connect with someone on a deeply intimate level, and my interest in doing so, was very limited. Lonely didn’t come up much, because I hadn’t the capacity to recognize I was missing something when I was alone, and when I did feel lonely it was generally a fairly biological thing driven by hormones and sexual needs, not at all on the order of the powerful loneliness experienced by someone yearning for a cherished deeply felt intimate connection that has been lost, or the loneliness of heartbreak. Perhaps learning to love truly well must include the experience of loneliness, to be valued in full? That seems a positive way to consider it, and I’m content with that for now.

I don’t know what today has to offer, or the weekend ahead, or the work week that follows. I am adaptable, life is unscripted, and reality brings spontaneity and change every moment of every day. Today I am a fearless explorer on a journey into an unknown future, with only ‘then’ and ‘now’ as compass and map. I hope to discover great things. Today is a good day to discover love.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women, Words

This is Why…

January 8, 2015 //
0

I didn’t get far with my day yesterday before the news was filled with murder, and soon thereafter #JeSuisCharlie – and with good reason. It’s criminal to murder. It’s unacceptable to take lives over a difference in aesthetic, opinion, lifestyle – I mean, let’s face it, murder just isn’t okay.  How do people ever get the idea that there is adequate justification to murder? That’s a level of righteous entitlement that frustrates and angers me, and I feel helpless. That’s perhaps the point; to render voices silent. I am moved by the outpouring of support as artists of all sorts stand, come forward, and make statements of their own – because we are all Charlie Hebdo; artists take risks with words, images, and songs. Every one with a voice, everyone with something to share, everyone with a message, everyone with an experience outside the ordinary, everyone moved to create art, compose music, or put words in a row, is Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo isn’t an individual anymore than The Onion is an individual – and the more powerful for having distilled the voices of many into one; this terrorist attack resulted in real human lives lost, real murder, and it’s really not okay.

This is why we can’t have nice things. How many times do we have sit back in shock and horror because some lunatic jackass(es) thinks they have the right to take a life to make a statement or prove a point? It’s horrific, and fairly stupid, that this goes on… but we live in a world where whole nations commit to acts of genocide, slaughter, land-grabbing, and warfare, over opinions, over resources, and over ideology. I defy you to find justification for any of it that is ‘rational’, reasonable, or truly necessary…but we all grow up in a world where our own leaders set an example that says to us all that we are not safe, and that our lives lack value, and that for some there is justification for murder.

I, too, am Charlie Hebdo. Aren’t you? What will you do to make the world safer for the artists who amuse, who enlighten, who delight, who move you to a different understanding than you had before? We need your help, your support, and the power of your convictions. Each of us, all of us, are Charlie Hebdo; don’t let your voice be silenced.

Tiny worlds exist between one perspective and another along my way.

Tiny worlds exist between one perspective and another along my way.

My own day was much less eventful than Wednesday in Paris. I went to my medical appointment, arrived on time, had my procedure. No amount of comforting medically dismissive preparatory dialogue is adequate to describe how much this procedure hurt…but the acute moment was very brief. “You may feel some cramping…” was definitely not accurate, relative to my own experience. It was vile. Invasive. Painful. I spent the remainder of the day gently, taking care of me in the company of my traveling partner. I called it a night early. Today I feel okay, although a little achy in an area I usually don’t feel much moment-to-moment. In the context of global terrorism, murder, and the viciousness of free-range human primates it seems a small thing. I can’t help but wonder…what would the perspective be of the wee life forms living in the moss growing in the crack on a brick wall, on our madness?

Today is a good day for perspective. Today is a good day to treat myself gently – and to treat the world gently, too; we’ve been through a lot, haven’t we? Today is a good day to be kind, out in the world.

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, grief, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, women
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