Archives for category: Hormone Hell
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It’s Nothing Like That Other Thing

January 13, 2015 //
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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 //
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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

Synonymous With Weird

January 9, 2015 //
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Today has been…strange. Peculiar? Sure, that, too. Perhaps a bit surreal, too, although bizarre would go too far. It’s late in the afternoon, and odd time to find me writing. That’s strange, too.

I slept deeply and well, and woke easily this morning – but woke thinking in the moment that it was during the wee hours. I felt discontent and off kilter to check the clock and have the alarm go off in my hands. My coffee was hot, and the household woke shortly after I did – only, I did not wish to interact with anyone. I heard beautiful music in the other room, and felt moved to greet my traveling partner, and the start of the day. He changed the music just at the moment I got to the living room. It was still a great track, not in step with my mood, but I lingered to enjoy it. Conversation developed, on a topic of shared-interest, and I didn’t really get to listen to the music. Then curious fact-finding questions resulted in de-railing the conversation, itself and I ended up being cut-out of the conversation. No one noticed, and I excused myself politely. Shortly after that I managed to turn a compliment into a contentious moment, making the mistake of trying to explain something that didn’t require an explanation, as it had gone unnoticed by anyone but me.

I’ve felt more than a little ‘out of step’ most of the day. Peculiar describes it well enough.

I don’t really have any enthusiasm (or interest) in troubleshooting circumstances; there’s really nothing ‘wrong’. I also don’t know that I have much more to say about it. I feel… weird. The weekend is almost here. The day is almost over. There’ll be another tomorrow. I don’t know what, if anything, I want out of ‘now’ – a connection; that’s as close as I get to understanding what I want.  A particularly intimate, deep, comfortable, reliable, loving, romantic, profoundly secure emotional connection…that I don’t know how to achieve, yet. (I will not be particularly surprised to find, on my deathbed, that this thing I yearn for doesn’t actually exist, but I am not convinced that it doesn’t…because I have the recollection of having achieved at some other time, what I yearn for now…which I also can’t count on being real.)

Inconveniently, the doctor put me on an Rx that may influence my thinking…so…what can I be sure of, at all? Yeah. Well…I’m sure it’s been a strange day.

A moment of illumination is sometimes not so easy.

A moment of illumination is sometimes not so easy.

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Categories Brain Injury, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

Real – Really?

January 7, 2015 //
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I woke with some difficulty this morning, so stiff that rolling over to shut off the alarm took effort, and the seeming ceaseless beeping until I got to the clock didn’t seem to do as much to wake me, for real, than I might have expected had I been sufficiently awake to have expectations beyond expecting to be able to turn off the alarm sooner, with greater ease. I’m still groggy.

I’ve been sitting here, gazing vacantly at my aquarium, and listening to a jazz standard that doesn’t sound quite right…even though I feel sure that the version I am listening to it the one I favor most.  It’s an odd sensation, that finds me searching YouTube for other versions, by other artists I have listened to singing this song… none of them sound the way I remember. the arrangement is somewhat different in all of them. Then…as I hum the version I expected, quietly, it hits me; I’m hearing the version of the song that is most representative of me singing it, myself. Yep. I sing jazz standards, mostly a capella, mostly in the shower, in the car, or out walking…and I rarely do so when anyone can hear me because my singing is actually pretty dreadful. lol I love the feeling that goes with whatever moves me to sing, and alone I feel no hint of self-consciousness about delighting myself in this fashion. I find it unexpected that my favorite version of any of these songs I love would be my own.

I suspect being hung up on this song this morning is a kindness my brain is offering me to distract from both pain, and the worrisome appointment later. It is convenient that the biopsy falls on the same day as therapy – however emotionally challenging the biopsy procedure may turn out to be, I’ll be getting pro-level support later. By the end of the work day yesterday, I was feeling pretty pragmatic about the appointment – and the procedure. I’m still tense about it, still a bit worried about the outcome, but it’s no surprise to me that I’m mortal, that I’m 52 this year, that aging is, or that uncomfortable medical procedures are sometimes necessary. I’m fortunate to have ‘procedures’ available that may save me from an early demise. Fear subsided by day’s end, and this morning I am…tense, yes, but unafraid. That’s an improvement.

The worst case scenarios my brain devised, of course, are dreadful – and seemingly reasonable, or at least potentially possible, but that’s sort of a requirement for a really terrifying worst case scenario, I think. I didn’t get past the fear until I allowed myself to consider these ‘worsts’ to their apparent likely conclusions, and took a moment to consider those proposed outcomes with an open heart, self-compassion, and acceptance. “What if…”  It added some things to the disappointingly long list of shit I think I need to work on, and served to reinforce an eagerness for life that is pretty positive, generally. My next step – and this one needed real will, and commitment to action, was to take some moments to consider that these worst case scenarios are just my brain running simulations – “what if” analysis – and they have no more reality at all than any other work of fiction. They are merely words, images, and projections of potential moments that are not yet, and may never be. They have no power over me that I do not give them, myself.

Perspective

Perspective

Having reached a point of emotional equilibrium about this appointment, it’s disappointing to wake up this morning in this much pain, and this stiff. My spine feels like my vertebrae are super-glued in place and lack any flexibility at all…but, hey… great day to see a doctor, even on an unrelated issue. (Are there really any ‘unrelated issues’, ever?)

So here’s a question… If you had to check out today – and I do mean end your mortal experience here in this plane of existence, no planning, no preparation, no last great experiences, just wrap things up and call it good – if you had to check out today, are you content with what you got done for yourself, and for the world? Have you left a lasting positive legacy of some kind, even if it’s only the lovely memories of having loved you that remain? Was it ‘worth it’? If the answer is ‘no’ – what will you do differently tomorrow? It was this question in mind, last night, as I arrived home that gave me insight I needed to communicate, at long last, something that had been throwing my heart’s song off-key and I was finally able to express it as a question without accusation, or grief, or baggage, and that was a wonderful moment.

Well…here it is, today, and no more stalling. Today is a good day to take care of me. Today is a good day to recognize the sometimes hurtful fictions in my thoughts are not the experience I live, unless I choose that experience, myself. Today is a good day to let events unfold gently. Today is just one day of many, and I am just one person, each of us having our own experience of the world.

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Fiction, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Big 5, winter

It’s That Time

January 6, 2015 //
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As arbitrary as our measurements of time can seem to me…it’s still time. It, like most things, passes. This experience of mortal life, of growth, of change, of aging isn’t a static thing, however much I want to find balance synonymous with ‘stability’. Change is. Time passes. I am a mortal creature (at least, as far as I know).

What lies beyond now?

What lies beyond now?

Yesterday was hard. I managed the work day without anyone but my closest coworker being aware that I spent much of the day weeping quietly for no apparent reason I could ever pin down, besides the simple sorrow of aging, the passage of time, and the frailty of what is dearest to us in our experience. Change is.  Heading home, I contemplated withdrawing to my own space and taking a quiet night of contemplation, and most probably additional weeping. I couldn’t bear the thought of inflicting what I could not fathom – or control – on those dearest to me. I got a lucky break – my traveling partner ‘gets it’ more often than most people around me do, and had put on The Voice for evening entertainment. How is that helpful? We don’t really watch much television, as a family, so it remains a very engaging ‘treat’, and the show he chose to share is one with a great many emotional moments in it; great camouflage for weeping. He simultaneously freed me to cry comfortably in the warmth of companionship without also having to feel I was imposing my emotions on others…and spared my dignity; there was no need for questions about my tears, and we could just let time pass in contentment and warmth. He could enjoy me without having to take the dive off the deep end with me. Easy. I like easy. It astonishes me how meaningful and relevant love songs, or moody ballads, can be when one is already weeping.

After a quiet evening, I crashed hard. Well, sort of. I fell asleep, deeply and immediately, and woke regularly to a half-waking surreal state that was not dreaming, and not waking, and not afraid – just floating in the sea of my consciousness, waiting for sleep to return. I woke ahead of the alarm, feeling a bit panicked for no particular reason; it receded with some minutes of meditation, and conscious breathing. I needed the rest, badly. This morning – no tears. What I do still have is this weird state of almost continuous back-to-back hot flashes that I’ve been having for about 3 days now, a handful of health and emotional concerns that I am fretting over…and an appointment tomorrow for a biopsy. That’s pretty scary. At 52, it’s just that time. I can pretend I don’t have this knot in my stomach when I think about it…but I don’t find that very effective. Instead, I take another breath, and a moment to appreciate love, and presence, and now, and the many people who matter to me, and to whom I matter, as well. Still anxious, but somehow, anxious in context doesn’t feel so scary.

What remains, for the moment, is figuring out whether I want my traveling partner to go with me. Is it weak that I might want someone strong to hold my hand? Am I less a feminist to want my partner by my side for such an intimate procedure? Is it fair to inflict these powerful emotions on someone else? What does ‘taking care of me’ really require? Are these questions I can answer fearlessly, honestly, and without shame?

Today is a good day to enjoy life, and let the sweet moments count as much as the every day doubts. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women
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