Archives for posts with tag: emotional self sufficiency
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Jazz and Memories

November 2, 2015 //
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The work day slipped by after a good night’s sleep, wedged carelessly between two lovely walks through the park, and followed quickly by an intimate evening spent in the company of my traveling partner. My experience of the day, summarized in a single sentence. The day was so much more than words can easily describe. I generally reach for more words to try to achieve the thing… Tonight isn’t about that.

Now is a good time for love.

Now is a good time for love.

I am listening to jazz, boiling water for tea, and smiling. I don’t need more than this moment, here, feeling connected, and buoyed by the shared experience of loving and being loved in return. I can’t say this is ‘enough’ – it’s ever so much more than that. “Enough” I can generally manage on my own – love is this whole other thing entirely, and shared it has a depth and sweetness I don’t have words for at all. Relaxing in the warm glow of evening light, and love, I’ll just enjoy some jazz, and some memories…brand new, as yet unsavored… and yeah, that’s enough. (More than enough.)

It’s a good evening to be love. The words aren’t what matter most.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Better Than Blue

November 1, 2015 //
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It’s been an interesting weekend of pain and contentment. It’s not a combination that comes to mind when I think of how I’d like to spend a weekend, but generally it’s been okay. Momentary tears today, just small frustrations that overwhelm me briefly, and they don’t linger the way the rain did, yesterday. The pain is what it is, and it could be quite a lot worse. I am learning to be with my physical pain just in this moment here, rather than pulling together all the threads of pain in the past, and anticipated (dreaded) pain in the future; I don’t hurt less, objectively, but the shift in perspective limited to pain-right-now seems to result in more ability to manage the pain I have, and endure the pain I can’t ease.

I spent most of yesterday relaxing and listening to the rain fall, no music, no video, no book…just the rain falling, patio door open to the sound of it. I love the rain. I enjoyed a nice hike in the morning, yesterday, too, before the drizzle became rain showers that lasted the rest of the day. I thoroughly enjoyed the day.

A photograph does not convey the feeling of the experience.

A photograph does not convey the feeling of the experience.

While enjoying the rain, I noticed some of my roses still blooming, and cut them to put in a small vase before the rain did them in. It’s a small thing, but I enjoy my roses greatly, and seeing the wee bud vase filled with miniature roses from my patio garden makes me smile every time I see them. I make a point of looking at them often.

The last autumn roses from my patio garden.

The last autumn roses from my patio garden.

Today the sunshine has broken through the clouds. Other than a trip for groceries, I haven’t been particularly productive today; it’s the pain. I’m okay with slowing down and taking care of me, and after giving the matter some thought, I adjust my thinking and plan ahead to have brunch with a friend, and get help moving the one heavy item that I need to put into storage before the holidays. I walk over to the storage unit with a tape measure and figure out what/where and picked up some hooks for hanging some things in the storage unit, while I was out for groceries. I’m excited to bring even more order and beauty to my wee home by moving things into storage that I don’t need day-to-day (the A/C in the winter months, for example). Order – and room; I measured. I lose about 10 sq ft of floor space just to paintings stacked against the wall here and there! This is not a big enough place to waste space that way.

Yesterday was so different. I hurt, but the focus of the day was most definitely on the rain, and the serene contentment and joy of listening to the rain fall. Today, it’s hard to tear my attention away from my pain. My traveling partner and I had planned to hang out this weekend; it didn’t work out. Pain sucks. There will be other opportunities, of course…but not one of them is ‘now’. lol I’m not moping over it. I take time to distract myself with one thing and another.

I find myself wrapped in gratitude; things could be so much worse. I spent some minutes considering the many ways in which I can clearly recognize specifically how things are better right now than they once would have been, under similar circumstances, in similar pain. I am not really surprised how often thoughts of my traveling partner or something we shared surfaced in my recollection; this extraordinary love we share is a thread that glitters brightly in my life’s tapestry, and our love has certainly been part of this healing journey. I’m a big fan of love, as a result, and ferociously loyal to this particular human being who is my traveling partner; I’m not always sure how good that is for me, and I occasionally lose perspective. lol

See, here’s the thing about love; I hurt, and it matters less than being able to also say “I love”.

Be love.

Be love.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Sooner or Later

October 28, 2015 //
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I am cooking dinner. I will treat myself gently tonight. My appointments with my therapist are not about ‘easy’. Today’s visit was… productive. I’m tired. I have a terrible headache. I am… thought-provoked. (There’s surely a less awkward word for that…) It’s okay; I’ve the quiet in which to relax, thoughtful or fretful, and the time left in the solitary evening to consider what I need from all this, as I sort things out and let other things sink in. Wednesday evenings are good for meditation, for long soaks in hot baths, for favorite music or interesting documentaries, and for taking care of this fragile vessel as well as I can.

It doesn’t really matter much what specifically I am working on just at the moment; very little of it feels ‘easy’, some of it doesn’t even feel worthwhile until long past when it is completely behind me… every bit of it matters, and there are verbs involved. Right now the verb is ‘cooking’. I wonder quietly if there will ever be a time that I don’t rely on reminders, ‘to do’ lists, alarms, and cheat sheets? Quite possibly not. I feel a moment of surprise that this does not distress me, and frustrated that I can’t quite recall with certainty whether it ever did.

It’s a quiet evening, suitable to taking care of me. I’ll have a healthy bite of dinner, a leisurely shower, and relax over a book… perhaps. I find myself rethinking that almost immediately; I need to let my brain rest, too. I consider an evening of music, and feel vaguely irritated. Just stillness, then? Sure. Dinner, a shower – and then chill time, sitting quietly with a cup of tea, probably chamomile, or maybe a hot cider… It’s the stillness itself that matters most.

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Epsom salts, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Small Differences Matter

October 25, 2015 //
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I feel anxious. Well, no…actually, I don’t feel anxious at all from the perspective of emotion. What I feel feels like the emotion I call anxiety (and maybe it is, in some fashion), but there is nothing in my experience of the day to support such a feeling – or to cause it. What there is, though, is noise.

I woke up in tremendous pain this morning, and feeling quite stiff. I did all the usual things to cope with that physical experience, and looked forward to a relaxed day, contentedly doing laundry and watching the rain fall.  I’ve had that, so in that sense the day delivered well on its promise; the chainsaws were unnecessary, and unexpected. Yep. Chainsaws. Chainsaws and a pneumatic log splitter and an air compressor. It is not anything like a quiet Sunday, now. Today the landlady and her husband are cutting the lumber from the recently felled trees down to size and stacking it. I am unfortunate that the wood was piled directly in front of my apartment when the trees came down. The woodpile on which the newly cut wood is being stacked is on the other side of my apartment. The split logs are being carried via wheel barrow – quite possibly the noisiest one ever – around my apartment, along the sidewalk just outside the long west wall, currently strewn with small gravel rocks and mud, so making a rather horrible grinding noise as the wheelbarrow is dragged along on what sound like triangular wheels. I am surrounded by the sounds of work on a fucking Sunday. I don’t know how to communicate to people that getting some quiet actually matters for my physical health as well as my emotional health. There just isn’t any way for someone to understand what they don’t understand. It is unlikely that my landlady has any real awareness of what the persisting noise does to my consciousness; saying that it ‘affects my mood’ doesn’t adequately explain things – it would affect anyone’s ‘mood’. It does.

I wait it out. It will be over sooner or later. I can’t meditate. I can’t focus to read. I can’t write with any ease – even masking the noise with other noise isn’t helpful, I feel cross and aggressive. I certainly wouldn’t be able to nap, and I’d very much like to. I can’t paint or draw. I feel frustrated and on the edge of anger – and I know that it isn’t really about any of these emotions; this is a physical reaction to very irritating stimuli. I go through the steps of meditation even though my consciousness feels raw and irritated; I breathe, and I breathe again. I let go of the aggravation and relax – and I do it again. I just keep repeating gentle practices and processes. I find myself frustrated and help myself over it. I start feeling angry and aggressive, and I take a few more deep breaths, and remember the landlady’s face; she wasn’t enjoying doing this work on a Sunday, herself – it certainly wasn’t ever ‘about’ me. That small moment of compassion and sympathy matters, too; taking the time to view another person as fundamentally human also, and equal in the value of their experience compared to mine makes me far less likely to be inclined to place blame, make demands, or lash out in anger. It’s a worthwhile pause for consideration.

The way ahead is sometimes obscured with fallen leaves.

The way ahead may sometimes be obscured with fallen leaves.

Eventually the laundry is done, and a nice casserole for supper (and tomorrow’s lunch) is made. The house is generally tidy, and the bed remade with fresh linens. I see the sun peek through gray skies for the first time today. It’s finally quiet, too. A lovely hot cup of tea might be nice… or a bubble bath… a short nap might be quite pleasant… I breathe in the quiet, and feel myself relax as the quiet becomes more real minute by minute. I am pleased that I didn’t let the noise get to me, today; there’s still so much of the day left to enjoy. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Shadows, Nightmares, Twists of Fate

October 19, 2015 //
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It’s a quiet evening, and I am alone with my headache and my arthritis, by choice. By mid-afternoon, my pain was just too much to find the thought of spending time with anyone else particularly enticing, and I asked my traveling partner for a rain check – as eager as we are to see each other, to cuddle, to laugh together, I am sometimes a bit of a lost soul when I hurt this much. Spreading that poison around is not a gesture of love.

Be love.

Be love.

I walked home thinking about the many ways that lovers communicate, and wondering how it is than anyone can ever justify being vile and inconsiderate to someone they love. Think it over for a moment – and just about at that moment when you’re at the edge of excusing some bit of heinous nastiness you may have recently visited upon someone you love by saying you didn’t mean to, or couldn’t help it – think about how many times you’ve shown greater self-restraint and not said something you felt was justified… because it could cost you your job. A job. I walked and wondered. How often have I – even with the little self-restraint as I can sometimes muster at all – how often have I held myself back from some angry remark  for a fucking job – but shown so little courtesy to a lover, or partner, that I would allow myself to say something that might be intentionally hurtful, diminish their value to me, or threaten their security in the relationship itself? Even once is too often! Even once is entirely incomprehensibly inappropriate between lovers. Seriously. Those sorts of words, those sorts of moments of unrestrained hostility are not love. Not only are they not love – they are not even adult. The anger of hurt children. Well…yeah. I do have this injury…  but… I don’t really find that my injury excuses treating someone I love worse than I treat my coworkers –  and I can do so much better, I mean, this is love we’re talking about! If I can generally and with exceptional reliability refrain from most bad behavior at work – how can I ever ever say to someone I love that I couldn’t do better in the way I treat them at home? It does take practice, but how is that not entirely acceptable, and needful? Isn’t love of far greater value than a job? Isn’t love worth practicing?

We choose our path, our words, our actions.

We choose our path, our words, our actions.

I’m not sure why I was thinking about all that, specifically, as I walked home. It’s been a very long time since I have had to deal with any of that. Shadows of old baggage. Remnants of nightmares. Maybe some relief that I’m not still ‘there, then’ with relationships that were a profound source of new pain. Relief that I am so much less heavily invested in old pain, too. Tonight I hurt – but it is only the more manageable hurt of headaches and back pain. Feeling my heart break hearing angry words is on an entirely other level of hurting, and there are no pills or prescriptions for heart breaks – and I am grateful to love and be loved by someone who recognizes the value of being love.

Perspective. What matters most?

Perspective. What matters most?

Attachment is a funny thing; I get so hung up on some detail that I earnestly want to be very real, and find myself unable to have the beautiful thing that is, or I fail to recognize what works for me because I am too busy struggling with what I’ve lost or can’t have. We are such complicated fucking monkeys. lol

Undisturbed by solitude.

Undisturbed by solitude.

I am enjoying the evening with myself. Listening to music I love. Feeling valued and respected by a man I value and respect in turn. Feeling valued and respected by the woman in the mirror. Content and unshaken. It has taken some hours to write even 683 words, and I wonder about that, too; I seem to write using fewer words when I write in the evenings, but it generally takes me much longer – and I’m not as certain that I’ve said what I thought I meant to… or anything worth reading significant, or insightful. I’m not bitching. I’m not feeling particularly critical on any point. It’s more the emotion that goes along with the funny face, head cocked to the side, of something I can’t quite fathom… “quizzical” is a word that comes to mind…only…it’s the wrong word for the moment. lol (…And here we quite possibly see the effect of fatigue on my injury as I begin to struggle to find words. Often. It is a source of ongoing frustration for me, but I don’t gloss over it anymore, or try to fake my way out of it; vulnerable frankness is a better fit for me. Your results may vary.)

I am tired. I still hurt. I am happily grooving to favorite tunes I’ve never heard before as I write. Think. Write some more. This is my life…at least…this is part of it, and it’s a really good part that I enjoy find meaningful. In this moment I can comfortably say ‘this is a really good part of my experience’ and it feels secure, safe, and comfortable; unthreatened. I don’t need this moment to also be the next moment. I am not regretting some other moment. No forever. No expectations of some moment beyond this one; I am so much more comfortable enjoying this one right now, just as it is. I have a slow back and forth conversation with my partner in the background while I write. It’s not an interruption; the conversation is paced to the things we are each doing, where we are.

Just in time to sit, quietly, to be still, and to listen...

Just in time to sit, quietly, to be still, and to listen…

The evening winds down slowly. Tomorrow I can begin again. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words
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