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Beginnings and Ends

November 28, 2016 //
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My coffee is still too hot to drink. The alarm clock seemed very loud when it woke me. I feel a bit as if I am moving especially slowly this morning; the clock corrects my very subjective perception of time. It’s a Monday after a long weekend. As if on cue, my brain launches a salvo of small anxiety-provoking attacks about this or that detail at work; I quash them with a minute or two of mindfulness, breathing deeply, present in this moment here. Work can at least wait until I actually get to the office! 🙂

Summer is definitely over. Autumn nearly over, too. Thanksgiving is done. The holiday season – my idea of holiday season, I mean – has begun. It is a beginning I wait for, plan for, and cherish each year. I have my own traditions, built on my values, refined over an adult lifetime, added to by one partnership, then another, over the years. The specifics are less meaningful or shareworthy, I think, than that I do have my own, chosen with care, selected from the celebratory traditions of my childhood, and then made my own, quite willfully. I like the way I do the holidays. It is rare for me to be overcome by ennui or despair during (or over, or about) the holidays, and I’ve tended to attribute that to doing them my own way… though, I don’t have any cite-able proof of that; it is my subject experience, only. For me, that’s enough, at least on the topic of holidays. 🙂

As days go, today doesn’t stand out in any obvious way. The beginning of a new work week. The beginning of the holiday season. I like beginnings, although they usually follow endings, which I often tend to think I dislike (compared to beginnings), but again, I have no clear evidence of that impression, and find myself wondering if the words truly reflect my thinking, or only some moment in my thinking that will quickly dissipate when my attention turns to other things? Change is. Whether an ending, a beginning, or some transitional point on a spectrum between those moments, change is part of the scenery on life’s journey.

I think of my Traveling Partner and smile. We have different approaches to living life in the moment; I prefer to plan, and to maintain a high level of readiness for many likely outcomes, and to cultivate a benevolent tolerance of circumstances that fall outside my planning, with frequent “rest breaks” from the hectic pace of life when I can retreat to a quiet corner of the world to take it all in, before returning to the busy-ness of life’s default settings. He has the boldness required to freely take life utterly as it comes, seemingly fearlessly and without anxiety; embracing change with a spontaneity that awes me, and often leaves me feeling unsettled.  We handle our emotional lives quite differently, too, both very human, both capable of great depths of emotion, both embracing intimacy and connection, and yet such different people day-to-day, in spite of shared values, shared experiences, and sharing (to this day) our journey in life over years. He finds too much planning constricting, and expresses feeling pressured. I find too little planning chaotic, and feel… pressured. lol We are more similar than we are different. This is likely true of each and all of us; more similar than different. Any human being’s most basic needs are likely to be pretty much the same from one person to the next. So many arguments between human beings are about meeting the same basic need in different ways, informed by prejudices, filtered through individual experience, limited by individual perspective, and individual understandings of definitions of terms. We’re still more similar than we are different – right down to not listening very well when another one of what we are is talking to us about their own experience. 😉

Taking time for simple pleasures matters, too.

Taking time for simple pleasures matters.

My coffee is not so hot now. I drink it down and consider a second one… there is time for that. I look across the table, the holiday tablecloth, placemats, and centerpiece are happy reminders of the weekend spent immersed in a wonderland of holiday memories, colorful trinkets, and tiny lights. The entire room is transformed. The tree stands in the far corner, and canisters of freshly baked cookies beyond that, on the bookshelf in that corner. Everywhere some Yule detail catches my eye. I smile. The soft glow of the room feels like it sources from within me. Sure, I’ll have a second coffee. Today is a good day to take time to enjoy simple pleasures. I’ll go do that. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, women, Words

More Today Than Yesterday

November 27, 2016 //
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I woke too early this morning, and by “too early” I mean that I definitely wanted to sleep later, certainly had the time for sleeping later, and just could not convince my brain that sleeping later was the thing to do this morning. I finally got up at 5 am, after tossing and turning, meditating, fussing, and daydreaming for about two hours. I feel well-rested, I just didn’t “feel like” getting up so early. I’m definitely awake, though.

Yesterday was spent quietly; easily achieved without having the temptation of television lurking nearby all the time. I don’t miss the TV. I’m getting by, computer-wise, on my work laptop, although it is not truly a substitute. I can at least write, much more easily than if I had to use my phone each morning. I’m content with things as they are. I have what I need, and that’s enough.

Yule is on my mind this weekend, as I set up the holiday tree, and decorate the house for the holiday season. Each year when I open the box of ornaments, it is as if I am holding precious memories in my hands. I decorate the tree, and remember things. Each ornament is a story, from a place and time before now. Each year I add one or two more ornaments, significant in some way, and they add to this strange memory box that only gets opened once a year – but always does get opened, yearly. Each year I consider who I am in the context of a lifetime. Each year I emotionally gorge on an intense assortment of recollections, until, by New Year’s Day, it is both timely and necessary that it all be put away for another year. Each year I hold in my hands small fragile reminders of good times and bad, of past versions of the woman in the mirror, of old pain, old sorrow, old joy, and old delight.

When I was much younger, the ornaments were selected with less care, more randomly, more about “ooh, shiny!” sorts of moments and impulses, and much less about what story they could tell, later. In recent years, new ornaments have been selected with great care, and the ornaments themselves become part of the story of who I am, told (mostly) in glass… and glitter, sequins, ceramic, paper, and twinkly lights. There is a gap in these memories (my own memories as well, it’s just placed differently in time); when my first marriage ended, I took only my “personal effects”, and my artwork, leaving everything else behind – including 13 years of Yule celebrations, 6 of those in Germany (the lovely ornaments purchased at the Augsburg Christkindlesmarkt we visited each year – all gone).  In their place, the worn cardboard box of small glass ornaments, 18 balls in assorted colors, that were the first ornaments I bought (at the local discount store next to the apartment complex I moved into) to begin rebuilding Yule after my marriage ended (they’re now more than 20 years old). I had visited my Granny that year over the holidays. In a wily Machiavellian act of master manipulation, she engineered a reconciliation between my parents and I, ending an estrangement that had lasted longer than my first marriage had, itself. I returned home with ornaments from childhood, a gift from my mother. She later sent me others. They remind me of childhood Yule celebrations, and more subtle things.

I’ll finish the weekend by finishing the decorating, savoring the moments revealed one by one as I hang the ornaments on the tree. Finally getting to the ornaments I made in that last holiday before I chose to live alone; it was a peculiarly awkward, sometimes rather grim holiday, that year. I celebrated mostly alone, in a shared household. The ornaments I made are lasting reminders that love can’t be forced or negotiated with, and once lost it is gone. They also remind me how much of my experience is chosen, and that even in the difficult moments in life, happy memories can be made, cherished, savored – and can become the lasting recollection of a trying time in life. I’m still working on that; there are verbs involved. 🙂

I sip my coffee and look across the dining table, still covered with ornament boxes of a variety of sizes. I’m only half-finished. It’s a time-consuming process for me to set up the tree alone; I pause for memories rather a lot. Some years I cry rivers of tears, too. This year hasn’t been that way; I celebrate with a quiet joy, and reflect more on what is, than on what isn’t. It’s not a process I rush. I have time – all weekend. Hell, I have a lifetime to unpack what memories I have, to cherish them, to savor them, to return them to their tidy boxes when the moment is done. Time enough to ask myself “why is this one significant?”, and “still?”, and “even now?”, and remind myself it is okay to set down some baggage this year (every year) and go forward a bit more the woman I most want to be.

The story of life's climate, and the emotional weather are told in so many ways; memories, however real they seem, are not moments. :-)

Memories and moments, today will be filled with both. 🙂

Today is a good day for a cup of coffee and a handful of memories. I smile and think of my Traveling Partner, and the memories we have made together, and this strange wonderful somewhat unconventional choice to be both quite partnered and quite solitary. I sip my coffee contentedly. Isn’t contentment enough? Ah, but what about changing the world? Let’s not forget to do that, too. 🙂 I get up to make a second coffee… as with most things, including changing the world, there are verbs involved. 😉

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter, Words

This One’s Not Your Choice

November 13, 2016 //
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There is so much we get to decide for ourselves, so many options on life’s menu to choose from moment to moment, day to day, over the course of a life, lived. We choose a lot of stuff. We make a lot of choices. Many decisions are in our hands. There is something we don’t get to decide; we don’t get to decide if we’ve hurt someone else. They get to decide that, as the person who feels hurt. Period. End of discussion. Non-negotiable. We only know our own intention, and we’ll lie to ourselves about that, if it suits us. (Yes, you too. Yes, me too.) We tend to make ourselves the protagonist in our own narrative – and “the good guy” as well.

Yesterday I hurt my traveling partner’s feelings. I wasn’t sure how initially; I was feeling pretty fucking hurt myself, as it happened. He’d managed to hurt my feelings, too. He brought his hurt feelings to my attention immediately. I felt crappy for hurting him, angry that he’d hurt me, and resentful that he “got to it first”, resulting in also feeling that I had no legitimate opportunity to speak up about my own hurt feelings with him directly, without undermining the sincerity of my apology for hurting him. It was a less than ideal situation for good communication, or affectionate support. Still… I muddled through, and stayed true to one understanding of emotions I have learned I can count on; when we feel hurt, whatever the circumstances, we want the person we perceived has hurt us to acknowledge our suffering, and the part they played in it, and if possible we want them to make it right (or at least to apologize sincerely without making excuses). It’s an important part of treating others well to be able to apologize wholly, to mean it, and to handle that quite separately from our own hurts. That’s hard sometimes.

It's hard to unsay the words.

It’s hard to unsay the words.

I don’t always recognize that I’ve hurt someone. I don’t always understand why they are hurting. If they are hurting, and they tell me they are hurting, I accept that the hurt they are experiencing is truly their experience; it isn’t up to me to decide for them what hurts. No amount of comparison to my own experience, or other experiences, can serve to define, clarify, or place limits on the experience of someone saying they are hurt; it’s their experience, no one knows like they do. Let’s put another period right there, while we’re at it – this is also a non-negotiable on life’s journey; we don’t get to tell someone else how they feel. Just stop doing that shit. (I still catch myself, sometimes, and it usually begins innocently enough as an attempt to connect, to understand, to empathize… doesn’t matter much how it begins, if it ends with me telling you how you feel, I am in error for doing so, regardless whether I am coincidentally correct about your emotional state.)

Search all the books that matter most to you, there are still verbs involved. :-)

Search all the books that matter most to you, there are still verbs involved. 🙂

I’ve gotten decently skilled at some of the emotional intelligence stuff… It hasn’t necessarily eased the journey in any noteworthy way. lol I am quite human, and struggle most with emotions within the context of my most passionate intimate relationships like pretty nearly everyone else. I’m okay with that, it is a process and there is no lack of love. I felt sad to have hurt my traveling partner’s feelings. Keeping my sadness to the side, without disrespecting my own emotional needs, I made myself commit to listening deeply, however much his words hurt me (there was nothing abusive about them, just painfully frank, and striking directly at where I also hurt most, myself, in that moment). In listening with great care, and great compassion, I stayed open to accepting that I had hurt him, regardless of my intent. I apologized. He lashed out, hurt and angry, and I apologized again for hurting him, while I wept private tears. My morning felt pretty blown. My head ached. I felt heartsick.

Perspective matters. I often find it here. ;-)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. 😉

I took the space I needed to care for my own heart. That was a mixed effort for some time. It got easier after my traveling partner had time to give consideration to the morning, himself, with a clear head, and unencumbered by his own hurts. He apologized to me. We mutually acknowledged the misunderstandings, the miscommunications, mistakes resulting from the order in which text messages were received or read, the way key words and phrases evoke emotional reactions, we reinforced our value to each other, and took time to say soothing, caring things. We moved on.

Be love. It's a choice. Love is a verb.

Be love. It’s a choice. Love is a verb.

Did I hurt my traveling partner’s feelings deliberately? No. I wouldn’t. It’s not my way and I find no value in willfully treating people poorly. Did I hurt his feelings at all? He said I did, therefore that is his experience; my own, in that moment, is not relevant to his experience – even if I am also hurting. (Those are quite separate experiences.) It’s hard not to respond to my lover’s pain with my own pain – but it’s not productive, generally, to do so.

Our own pain easily manages to feel like the worst pain we’ve ever known (and generally without regard to whether we’ve ever hurt worse in the past, in other circumstances). Our approach to the pain of others is different – we want to fix it, to help, and we most certainly don’t want them hurting, we try to make it go away, or try to ignore it. As silly as it seems to read it in print, we behave as though we can use our words to re-craft our experience omitting their pain. It just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes people hurt. Sometimes we are the reason why they are hurting. The result, too often, is that we put our own pain ahead of the pain of others and end up imagining our pain hurts worse, when we cannot possibly know that, and can’t validate that assumption even by asking. The kinder choice is simply to be compassionate about pain, and to apologize when we’ve hurt someone. In mutually supportive relationships among equals, this is a reciprocal practice.

It’s still super hard though; if I feel hurt I want that attended to, and letting it go long enough to care for the pain of another is one of the more difficult practices I practice. Sometimes the result, as with yesterday, is that after that hurt person is cared for, they return that care and soothe my hurt in return. Sometimes that is not the case, and I must care for myself. The thing about that… it’s okay. I’m getting pretty good at caring for myself, and when I must, I can count on me to do so pretty skillfully. The most important thing is to refrain from treating myself badly while supporting someone else. Yesterday I managed it through a haze of tears over text communication… I don’t know that I could have done it with as much success in person. I’m still very much a student. I need more practice.

I keep practicing.

I keep practicing.

My traveling partner and I enjoyed a splendid fun evening, later on, and not “as if nothing had happened” – that’s a place I don’t personally want to get trapped. Instead, we enjoyed the deeper intimacy of two human beings, fully human, loving each other humanity and all, awake and aware, present with each other. When we greet each other our embrace wrapped us both in warmth and affection, and the shared understanding that we’re really there for each other – even when we’re the ones bringing the pain. Those sincere reciprocal apologies built on respect, consideration, compassion, and openness, delivered with awareness, and accepted with heartfelt relief make a huge difference. We go forward stronger. Love wants a good apology without reservations, and without excuses. It’s okay to save reasons for another moment, a different conversation, some other time.

This morning I sip my coffee, content and calm. No lingering tears, no “emotional hangover”. It’s nice. It’s been a long journey to get here. There is further to go. Today is a good day for housekeeping, and becoming the woman I most want to be. Today is a good day to practice loving well.

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

Transcend Some of This

November 8, 2016 //
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Let’s not talk about the election. Please just be your best self today, when you go to the polls to make your choice (if you happen to be a voting citizen in the United States). We’ll see what comes of it tomorrow.

This morning I am not dealing with petty bullshit or drama, and that feels good. It can be a difficult choice to make, and reinforcing boundaries about something so commonplace as “drama” can be met with a lot of resistance if friends and loved ones are used to hijacking other lives with their poison. We’re each having our own experience. My idea of drama may be the circumstances you are mired in, needing emotional support. My lack of interest in drama is not expressed as “no one has time for your feelings”, day-to-day, it’s more about making a point not to continuously rehash the same moment of conversation or pain, past any point of gaining understanding or perspective. There comes a time to let it go, or make a choice to handle things quite differently. Turmoil sucks.

I recently had to set boundaries with a friend who made a point of angrily slamming my door during a stressful moment with her partner; that’s the drama I’m not having. Don’t slam my damned door. Non-negotiable. Door-slamming and yelling stress me out, and have no practical value whatsoever. Use your words. Setting the boundary was easy, facing her defensiveness and resistance to hearing that she’s violated a personal boundary of mine was unpleasant nonetheless. I expected an apology, and got an angry resentful reply instead. Rather than allow that to escalate, I let it go. I will continue to reinforce that boundary. If the undesirable behavior continues, I may choose not to have that friend back into my space. I like it to be quite calm and safe-feeling here.

I enjoyed a fun evening with my traveling partner last night, although somewhat unexpectedly. Only somewhat; the quantity of drama in his everyday experience in another relationship is so ludicrous, from my own perspective it hardly seems endurable – I know to expect the unexpected in my own experience, as a consequence. Last night we let all that go, even the stress and doubt and hurt feelings and anger, we let it all go and just enjoyed each other. The evenings are short. It’s a far better choice than becoming swamped in negative emotion, chaos, and bullshit during the limited precious time we have together. We talked about the future. We enjoyed the present. We got some sleep.

Embrace a peaceful moment. Breathe. Repeat.

Embrace a peaceful moment. Breathe. Repeat.

It’s a new day. Today is a good one to begin again. Today is a good day to right our wrongs. Today is a good day to consider what we are doing (about, with, and to each other) with more care than we did yesterday. Today is a good day to have a serene heart and to choose love. Today is a good day for choices that change the world.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

Sometimes

November 4, 2016 //
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I woke with a smile an hour ahead of my alarm. It’s a calm quiet morning. It’s more than enough, in all the best ways. I sip my coffee, smiling still, very much aware of my good fortune in this lovely moment.

I saw my therapist yesterday. It’s been a long while, and the visit had its own flow, its own unique vibe, familiar, intimate, comfortably supportive, safe enough to reach into the darkest pit of anxiety, fear, or damage, and come through the experience still whole and with my sense of self intact. I arrived home to enjoy the evening with my traveling partner. It was a lovely fun evening, and we shared some of that with friends.

Only one thing marred an exquisitely lovely evening of fun among friends; drama. OPD (Other People’s Drama). Close friends, in a quiet moment, began an obviously stressful conversation about personal finances. I did my best to give them some privacy and overlooked it as things started to escalate emotionally. My place is a “drama free zone” by choice and by design; once things began to escalate, I attempted to communicate a boundary, first by gently working to change the conversation. I was not effective. They continued to have their moment. Although we had planned to have dinner together, one partner stormed off all door-slamming-ly to deal with things elsewhere, leaving the other rather morosely working to deal with it from the vantage point of my dining room table, staring into a personal device, exchanging messages at length. Who hasn’t been there?

It's hard to unsay the words.

It’s hard to unsay the words.

In spite of my sympathy, and my compassion, my own self-care is a higher priority than OPD, and the house rules include such things as “don’t slam the door, or the cupboards, or – yeah, actually don’t slam shit”, and “don’t yell”. These are non-negotiable. Says who? Um… me. My house, my rules, my way. The eventual return of the partner who stormed off was accompanied by an air of “who me? nothing happened with me, why?”, and followed by an abrupt departure by the pair, headed for other things – and no apology for the drama. My final attempt to communicate a reminder to the door-slamming friend that my home is a drama free zone was met with a weirdly childish defensiveness, as though it were more important to assign blame than to be accountable for ones actions and show some consideration for my space, and my boundaries. It was uncomfortable. That discomfort lingers. I’m not yet certain how I’ll deal with the whole mess once I have a chance to process it.

I set that aside and return to the morning, here, now, this lovely quiet morning. Last night was unexpected and delightful – what does tonight hold? There’s nothing on my calendar for the weekend, and a quiet weekend at home sounds really good. I laugh about that, reminded that last night’s great joy was built on a foundation of music, laughter, and boisterous good times. It was not quiet here last night. I think about my traveling partner, and smile. I am well-loved indeed. Finding that comfortable balance between planned and spontaneous, boisterous and chill, rules and anarchy, boundaries and the things that lay beyond them is all part of the journey, I suppose.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

What a lovely morning to begin again.

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words
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