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More Stormy Weather

November 13, 2014 //
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Okay, so definitely winter, or as nearly so as makes no difference, now. We’ve a winter storm warning for freezing rain, maybe mixed with some snow, definitely mixed with some local panic; we don’t do snow and ice well, here. The local transit is in chains – snow chains – but for now that’s more ‘just in case’ than actual weather. Weather forecasting has come a long way since I was a child, too, there’s real weather coming, and the storm shows in local radar. Do I go into the office, or not? That’s more complicated. This morning, I am inclined to go in to work in spite of the weather. Staying home doesn’t sound pleasant; everyone else is already committed to working from home, and I’m already feeling very irritable after an unpleasant start to the morning. I guess it will ultimately depend on whether the weather is worse than my mood. I keep checking the reports, and the transit web page; when local transit starts shutting down, it’s definitely time to heed the storm warnings.

Heeding storm warnings has great value. One of the small things in life I find most easily irritates me, personally, is when people close to me ignore my ‘storm warnings’, or treat me dismissively, or with a parental demeanor, when I am annoyed or angry. Mockery when I’m angry is the high-speed bullet train to the deepest longest-standing chaos and damage. Stoking my anger when I also feel helpless – or creating conditions wherein I feel helpless when I am already angry – is Plan A if the goal is to see me at my worst. Pretty nearly everyone has ‘tells’ – warning signs – that they are being pushed into their emotional ‘badlands’. I would expect that this being the case would make it so easy for everyone to be mindfully considerate of each other, sharing feedback in gentle words, delivering concerns or complaints with consideration and awareness that the person being spoken to is also human, and probably doing their best, generally. Being aware that the person we’re speaking to has their own issues, their own baggage, their own ‘soft white underbelly’ has so much potential to foster great experiences among beings built on respect, appreciation, affection… We don’t use our awareness that way very often, do we? I definitely have room to grow in that area. So does everyone I know. Hell, I can’t seem to reliably take advantage of my awareness of my own emotional state moment to moment to treat myself genuinely well, and with great fondness and tenderness – and I totally know me, and all that I need to thrive. It’s puzzling and frustrating and the result tends to be that I’d rather be at the office, where the expectations of me are very clear, and emotions don’t generally come into it.

I’d like to just coast gently from moment to moment with profound awareness, and great consideration for all my fellow travelers. Somehow, I keep finding myself pissed off about some small thing, or feeling hurt… It is a challenge to be ‘above the bullshit’ long enough to evaluate circumstances with reason, untainted by the hurt of the moment, to make the best possible decision which will meet my needs best over time. If I gave in to myself right now, I’d be storming around the place, stomping, slamming things, swearing… it wouldn’t help at all; it would merely serve to attempt to communicate to the household that I’m pissed off and hurting. If they don’t already understand that from my demeanor, and my words, they are not going to understand it through being obnoxiously loud, either; they aren’t listening. So. I sit quietly, seething alone, waiting for the storm to pass and hoping that the weather outside the house remains safe for travel. It’s best that I take this side of me to the office where I can harness the fury to a good cause without hurting anyone.

I feel angry this morning. I’m struggling to make peace with myself and the circumstances. It’s an enormous effort to practice practices I know ‘help’ – anger is an emotion that tends to want a specifically satisfying outcome, and seems to have the will to feed itself to stay alive. Knowing this hasn’t made it any easier to undermine my anger with wholesome emotional support based on self-sufficient practices. I dislike feelings in this range of the emotional spectrum, and a lot of my baggage is ‘about’ things colored by these sorts of emotions. It’s hard to make the choices that ease my suffering, sometimes. It’s hard to let go of wanting to be heard, and understood, and treated well, so I can rest comfortably on self-care practices that have built up my emotional resilience over time. It’s easier to yield to the misery, and give in to the suffering; but the outcome of doing so is predictably unpleasant. The outcome of good practices, emotional self-sufficiency, perspective, and a willingness to care for me with the same enduring strength and commitment I would bring to caring for any loved one is worth the effort, if only I can make the effort. There are verbs involved.

So. I guess today is a good day to practice good practices… and it looks like I’ll get a lot of opportunities to keep practicing. Today is a good day to attend to storm warnings, and take care of me. Today there’s stormy weather.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Hormone Hell, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, winter, Words

The Ups, The Downs, the Friendships

July 3, 2014 //
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I have some amazing friends. I spent time with one of them last night, after an incredibly difficult and emotional therapy appointment. We didn’t talk about therapy. We didn’t talk about ‘my issues’. We got caught up on ‘things in general’ and shared some laughs, some compassion, and some connected time. It was exactly what I needed. Awareness. Support. Affection. Openness.

Things in therapy are headed for deeper waters these days. This is the first time therapy has ever held real promise of reaching emotional wellness… I try not to get my hopes up, and simply be present, and continue to practice what is working now.

Strange stuff in the news; a lot of articles seem more ‘emotional‘ than I recall news tending to be. It’s probably ‘just me’; like anyone else, I read the news in the context of my own experience, and of late it has been an emotional experience. I’m not running from that. I am learning to value my emotional experience, make room for it, and allow it to speak to me. I am choosing to spend less time with people who are not in a place where they can also respect my emotional experience. They have their own path, I’ll let them walk it without interference from me; we are each having our own experience.

Each having our own experience, walking our own path, and making our own choices.

Each having our own experience, walking our own path, and making our own choices.

Much of the afternoon yesterday I felt raw, exposed, vulnerable, and on the edge of panic. I don’t waste any time during my one-hour session with my therapist, we dive into the rough stuff straight away, these days. I walk away feeling certain the effort – and progress – are worth the money. It’s still hard to be near ‘my fellow man’ for hours afterward, and the idle chatter of people who don’t share my experiences grates on my raw nerves. It’s okay; hanging out with a friend is a salve for raw nerves, every time.

Some metaphor about blooming in shadows, or perspective, or... hey, it's a flower. Flowers are lovely.

Some metaphor about blooming in shadows, or perspective, or… hey, it’s a flower. Flowers are lovely.

The world isn’t seeming a very nice place lately, and it’s not for any lack of loveliness; there are flowers and birdsong aplenty, children’s laughter is still commonplace, and there’s no shortage of sunny summer days. People can be so mean to each other, though, so cruel, so callous. ‘Political rhetoric’ is sometimes so vicious, so lacking in compassion, that it  hardly seems that anyone is still aware that the outcome of the things being discussed effect people. Real people. Human beings. Has everyone forgotten? It’s not actually ‘about’ ideology – none of it. It’s all about people, and most everything we do and choose ultimately is.

Please be kind to people. Crazy people, sad people, angry people, frustrated people, people whose ideas are not your own, people who are famous, people who have been overlooked; it costs nothing to be kind, and it can change the world. Please be kind to women people, men people, children people. Please just be kind – there isn’t room on this planet for even one more jerk.  Please be kind to people you just don’t understand, and to people you understand only to well, and dislike completely; kindness can change hearts, and open minds.  Please be kind to yourself, too; you won’t find yourself being any kinder to others than you are capable of being for yourself. Please be kind to sick people, and to people struggling to be well on limited resources. Please be kind to people who are suffering, even when you are suffering, too. Please just take a moment to be kinder than you knew you could, and to understand that each time you do, you prepare yourself for a better world by helping to create it. I’ll do it, too.

Today is a good day to choose kindness. Today is a good day to reach out to a far away friend. Today is a good day to look ahead to better days, and make the choices that create them. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, grief, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Summer, The Big 5, women, Words

Vacationing in Hormone Hell

February 15, 2014 //
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I’m just bitching. (Nothing to see here, folks, let’s move it along…)

We can choose to be dismayed by circumstances, mired in our mud, or we choose differently.

We can choose to be dismayed by circumstances, mired in our mud, or we can choose differently.

The ‘hormone thing’ is one of those maddening bits of human existence I could do without, on an emotional level. Thankfully, the variation in my day-to-day balance is both less significant in severity, and less common these days. Long overdue, I say. I’ve had my fill of having my existence linked in some vague and irrefutable way to reproductive potential. I’m ready to move on to just being a person, with will of my own, and a level of every day balance that is at least somewhat predictable.

I still find a lot of opportunity to resent the fuck out of the lack of medical progress in the area of women’s health and well-being with regard to sex, sexuality, hormonal cycling, and reproduction. You may not agree – I mean, so many fewer women die in childbirth than once-upon-a-time, right? And…The Pill, people, we have The Pill. Sure, sure, we do. Good stuff. I wouldn’t reject those advances as being undesirable or unworthy of high regard; they are game changers for women. Still…we’re talking about medical science.  Are you aware that there is no ‘test’ for menopause? None. No scientific, clinically validated, reliable test that determines conclusively when a woman has reached menopause. Oh wait… there is this ‘state of the art’ gem: “When it’s been a year since your last period, and you are ‘older’ than typical child-bearing age, it’s ‘menopause’. (If you are ‘too young’ for menopause, don’t forget to see your doctor if you miss your period for a year.)”  Yep. That’s it. State of the art medical science and diagnostics in action. Welcome to Hormone Hell, we have your reservation on file.

Those years after a woman ‘loses her goddamned mind’ and is finally accepted to be ‘menopausal’ are an interesting buffet of being insulted, ignored, over-medicated, referred for mental health care, infantilized, resented, feared, and dismissed. It all sucks very much, from the first time a physician tut-tuts those very first concerns that ‘something isn’t right’ to the moment a physician much younger than you are insists that ‘you’re really much too young’ to be experiencing peri-menopausal phenomena – at 45.  By 50, most doctors will grudgingly admit that perhaps you’re not insane and may actually be accurately reporting your experience, and may be closing in on menopause. Did I mention it sucks?

Hilarity really ensues, for me, when a lovely, educated, fit physician in her early 30s states with considerable self-assurance that ‘most women’ don’t have any real difficulties with their hormones, and more likely need mental health care – because she has not had any issues herself.  Yep, that’s a real winner with me. lol. Another fan favorite is when women who have finally gotten to the other side somehow magically rewrite history such that their recollection of their own experience is that ‘it really wasn’t a big deal’ and they ‘barely noticed at all’. I like that one best when they deliver it sweetly in the presence of family members who actually recall how bat-shit crazy the bitch was for nearly a decade; the facial expressions are priceless, and sometimes people snort their beverages, and shoot them out their nose.

I’m ready to be done. I don’t really enjoy the new challenges (vaginal dryness – it’s a real thing, ladies, and it’s likely going to result in at least one or two tearful rounds of ‘but I did feel like it, I don’t know why…’ before everyone settles down and moves on to the next issue), and the reduction in moments of hormonal tantrums and flare-ups of temper sometimes doesn’t make up for the hot flashes, the sleeplessness, or the chronic uncertainty about when/if there’s going to be gross quantities of unexpected bleeding.

It’s gotten to be almost routine, now. I have some mild, barely noticeable shift in hormones, and the ripple effect on my experience is so subtle it is almost undetectable…until I find myself frustrated by something small, or losing my train of thought in mid-sentence. 5 years ago it was more about ‘please, can’t you give me some sympathy, or some help?’  Now, I find myself more likely – like this morning – to be feeling something more ‘damn it, I wish this were finished, this has got to be hard on him.’ Who knew I’d find some value in this process, or a way to apply these experiences to personal growth and perspective? I sure didn’t.

I was once a woman in my 20s, pretty cocky about how comfortable my hormone balance felt for me. I had little sympathy for other women; I didn’t have cramps, so how bad could theirs be? Later I was a woman in my 30s facing doctor after doctor assuring me I was wrong about my experience, and being given medication for things that probably don’t need a pharmaceutical solution as much as they need support, understanding, and education. I was definitely headed for ‘bat-shit crazy’ at that point. I’m not so cocky now. lol. I hope that I don’t get to the other side and magically lose all recollection of how tough some of this has been.

My latte is cold. I’m bored with bitching. My head aches. I feel cross and disconnected, and struggle to make simple decisions real-time without dithering a bit. My conversational flow is impeded by my emotional experience.  If you’re also vacationing in Hormone Hell, I’m just down the hall – you have my sympathy, and you’re not any crazier than you choose to be, although there are unavoidably moments when that isn’t clear. 🙂 If you no longer vacation in Hormone Hell, nice going, and I hope the scenery is extraordinary wherever you find yourself now; have a great time! If you don’t know what the hell I’m on about, because you just haven’t gotten there yet… your time will come. Trust me. (And don’t be a dick, seriously.) 😉  If you are riding shotgun with someone vacationing in Hormone Hell, I want more than anything to offer reassurance, to give you support, to say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… and if you are the sort who does sympathize and support your hormonal partner(s) to thank you for that… but… damn. There aren’t really any words to bridge that divide. What reassurance could I offer? ‘Next month may be better’? ‘It’ll all be over, eventually’? I guess ‘thank you for hanging in there, and trying to understand how hard this might be’ is about the best I can do.

There is an airplane in this picture. It's a metaphor.

There is an airplane in this picture. It’s a metaphor.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women
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