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What.The.Hell?

September 16, 2017 //
2

Yesterday got off to a great start, and finished, rather literally, with a bang. Well, more of a crash. I got tail-ended in rush hour traffic. No “lol”, no emoji, no minimizing, no catastrophizing; I got hit from behind by an inattentive driver while I was stopped, with sufficient force to leave an impression of her license plate frame in my bumper. It wasn’t what I planned for the evening, it certainly wasn’t what I expected, but it is a thing. It occurred.

I’m okay.

It was a generally weird day that stands out a bit in a sort of “report card” fashion, because quite frankly an ever-loving-shit-ton of stuff (all super strange oddball outliers of events and circumstances) went peculiarly sideways yesterday, a lot of it rather inconsequential, some of it to do with money, all of it touching on the sorts of things that would have grievously triggered me even a year ago. I’d have been emotionally incapacitated, flooded, and completely overwhelmed by a day like yesterday. It most likely would have sent me crashing into a period of learned helplessness and despair that could last weeks, punctuated by reactive relief-seeking acting-out that wouldn’t have helped at all, probably made things much worse.

This morning, I am relaxed after a good night’s sleep. I feel pretty comfortable physically. I’m still on for my trip down to see my Traveling Partner, and don’t seem to be dealing with any significant after-effects of yesterday’s experiences. Things seem quite fine, actually. As though yesterday were entirely separate from today in every way, other than being adjacent to one another on a calendar page. So. Apparently it is possible to “enjoy” a day of utter chaos, with some destruction and loss, and yet somehow not go to pieces, not melt down, not lay waste to whatever is left to hold on to… It’s possible to do a bit better than merely survive what is uncomfortable, chaotic, and destructive. That’s some good news right there. 🙂

I got hit hard enough that I felt light-headed and strange when I got out of the car. Wobbly. Worried about my back, my neck, my head – the other driver. Late into the evening I continued to wonder if the persisting headache was from being struck, or just another persisting headache like so many? This morning – no headache. That’s enough. I slept well, and I feel comfortably able to get back in the car and drive down the highway. Road trip!

Today feels like a good day for beginnings. I find myself hoping this particular day includes a big reduction in the quantity of weird shit going on compared to yesterday. lol Yesterday was a bit much to take, and I’d started to feel a bit.. hexed. Still… wow. How much more well-prepared for living life am I, that yesterday didn’t destroy me? Didn’t even blow me off course! That’s… yeah. Wow. I gotta stop celebrating at some point, though; it is far to easy (for me) to let a moment of celebration become a careless presumption that I am “entirely well” or in a place where I “don’t even have to worry about any of that”, and I lose myself in a quagmire of poor decision-making and frivolous use of resources, and find myself both accountable, and unprepared to care for myself. Like a kid taking the training wheels off their bike for the first time, then falling on their ass. I’d like to avoid that fall.

I find it best to have my moment, enjoy recognizing the progress I have made, and return fairly quickly to practicing the practices that support my wellness over time, and that meet longer term needs, and keep me on a path that supports my goals. 🙂

So, this morning I begin again. Again. I make choices. I get up gently when the alarm goes off. Yoga. Strength training. A leisurely shower. I check my list and begin doing the small things I’d want done before I return home: top off the aquarium, make the bed, tidy up a few things, drop my kindle in the side pocket of my bug out bag. I look around before I sit down with my coffee to write a few words before the weekend really gets going; is this the home I want to come home to? Will I feel “welcomed” when I return? Will I be comfortably able to just walk in, set down my bag, and chill? Satisfied that I have met the needs of a future me (only days into the future, but you know, we haven’t met, yet, and I do want her to be welcome when she gets home) I relax and make an Americano.

I sip my coffee contentedly. I take a few minutes to check in with friends. I smile thinking about a moment in the office, yesterday. I’d seen a colleague looking a little… well, we’re both veterans, and he had that look of being “stuck in a different moment” and avoided eye contact. I reached out over our messaging service a little later and just asked him how he was doing? He said “I’m good”. I wasn’t sure I believed that, but it’s not necessarily helpful to pry people open like clam shells. I replied “Awesome. Big plans for the weekend?” He sent me an emoji back and commented “That’s a solid buddy check right there. I had a moment, earlier. I’m okay now” and proceeded to tell me about his upcoming plans. We shared a bit. Turned out I felt the need for some support too, but it was less obvious to me that it was to him. The power of connection. The power of relationships and shared experience. That interaction was one high point of a strangely chaotic and messy day.

I’m not sure I’ll ever fully leave some of life’s pain behind me. I don’t really expect to entirely clean up all the chaos and damage – but it is pretty fucking splendid just to be able to live my life without everything seeming to crash down, over and over and over again, like a house of cards in a strong breeze, any time something goes a little sideways. Progress. Incremental change over time. Lots of practices. Lots of verbs. Lots of choices.

Oh hey, look at the time! There’s a highway just over there… and a journey to make. I’ve got a map for this one, but even in this instance, the map is not the journey, and I have to make this trip, myself. 🙂 I’m having my own experience.

It’s definitely time to begin again. See you on Sunday – in the glow of evening light, perhaps? 😉

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Categories anger, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Be You Instead

September 8, 2017 //
4

Are you a Republican? A Democrat? An “Independent”? A “liberal”? A “conservative”? “Right wing”? “Left wing”? Progressive? A “nationalist”? A “patriot”? Among the “faithful”? An atheist? A “free-thinker”? Cis-gender? “Gender queer”? Non-binary? Are you a “social justice warrior”? A “snowflake”? A capitalist? A socialist? A communist? An anarchist? Neurotypical? “On the spectrum”?

Are you fused with an identity, seeing yourself as part of a specific limited group with specific challenges, limitations, requirements, rights, or burdens to bear that no one else can understand, and everyone else stands against? Have you divided the world into “us” and “them”?

That’s a lot of work. Maintaining the details of identity moment to moment, protecting it, shoring up the details of that internal narrative overtime and through conflict sounds like a lot to take on. Does it have real value? Are you that, and only that? Really? Are you even actually definably that at all?

I woke up this morning thinking about pigeonholes, identity, definition, and the way  I can so easily limit myself by becoming fused to just one element of my experience, potentially even building road blocks on my journey through life that may not have been there, in fact, at all. We make up most of our understanding of our own experience (and who we each are) out of “thin air”. Who are you? What matters most about that person in the mirror? If life ended in this moment, right now, no time to prepare – and in the next, strangers were going through your things – what would they learn about you? Is that the legacy you want left behind? What is your truth?

Who are you? Who am I?

My visit with my therapist yesterday was productive, and peculiarly comfortable and celebratory. I heard words I’ve never heard from a therapist before. “Well… do you want to just give me a call in a few weeks, if you want to see me again? I don’t think we need to schedule anything regular…” That’s probably not verbatim. I recall the moment more than the words.

Well. So, I guess I adult decently well these days. That’s… scary and cool. Who am I? The woman in the mirror doesn’t look different to me. There’s a thread of recognizable self that reaches back all the way to my earliest memories. I’m not any of the things it is so tempting to grasp to fill out some sort of “profile” of self-ness, though. It’s a strange awareness. I could say “I am…” and begin a long list of all the qualities and characteristics that could be used to identify me, but I am not any one of those things. If I allow myself that moment to fuse with some one characteristic or quality of my experience (“anarchist”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “survivor”, “veteran”, “woman”, “artist”…), I seriously undermine my experience of self. There’s so much more to me than any one quality.

I decide to stop wearing any labels, at least today, and enjoy that feeling of wholeness, of being human, of simply being. If we could each stop dividing our experiences into “us” and “them”, we could begin to change the world.

Isn’t it time to begin again?

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Words

Pay Attention While You’re Driving!

September 7, 2017 //
0

This is not a public service announcement, I’m just saying; it’s dangerous to drive if you are distracted. It’s also annoying bullshit for people stuck behind you while you scramble to adjust your music, or futz with your phone, or play with some device, or turn around to scold a child, or whatever the fuck it is you thought was a higher priority than attending to the processes involved in driving that fucking car which you are behind the wheel of. omg. Seriously?

I was behind one shortly after I left the parking lot at work. The first 4.4 miles of my commute are along a fairly narrow stretch of two-lane road, intersections at each block, cross walks between those in many locations, and cars parked along both sides. It is a favored area for diners, shoppers, and urban adventurers, many of whom seem positively unaware that “rush hour” exists as a concept, and so they mill around in the early evening, darting out between parked cars, ambling across crowded streets without hesitation or consideration of the flow of traffic. The drivers, similarly, are a mixed mess of folks who are overly considerate of jay walkers, and jerks who don’t even stop for pedestrians at cross walks with active “walk” signals. The cars are usually bumper to bumper. The speed limit is posted 25 miles that entire distance; when there is any gap in the traffic at all, drivers tend to speed up to fill it, as if specifically seeking to prevent even one more other car from turning off a side street into that 4.4 mile long line of irritated inattentive human primates. This driver and I were among them. At any light at which that car was the first car waiting at the light, I frustratedly waited after the light turned green for the driver to notice that fact (the first time long enough to miss the light completely, the next 4 times I tapped my horn after a “5 count”). This puzzles me; I’m watching the fucking light, waiting to continue. I am driving my damned car. lol This anecdote does not lead anywhere particular – choose your own lesson, if there is one to be found, but damn it – if you are driving a fucking car, do that. Just drive.

Do the thing you are doing in life, in this moment, with your whole attention, just generally! (No, you do not “multi-task well”, no one does, there’s science on that, and you are missing out on moments of your life by thinking you do and continuing to cultivate this fractured consciousness.)

I’m not even kidding. I don’t use my phone while I’m driving, unless I park, shut off the engine, and get back on the road when I’m done. I don’t prefer to take hands-free phone calls, and don’t answer the phone for anyone but my Traveling Partner without actually parking the car. I’m working to break that habit too; he loves me, and waiting for a call back is worth his time – and my safety. Driving is a complex set of interconnected processes. Distracted driving is an unreasonably risky behavior.

End rant. Begin day. 😉

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Free Will, Frustration, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, The Big 5

What Does the Future Look Like?

August 31, 2017 //
0

I woke with a smile this morning. My dreams were filled with love and images of some vision of the future, and as I recall there was a kitten involved, somewhere, or perhaps an avocado tree – I’m not sure. It was, after all, the content of dreams. 🙂

The morning feels good. The recollection of a long pleasant phone call with my Traveling Partner lingers, and mingles with the content of my dreams, and the smile on my face feels quite reliably part of my experience. I’m not in much pain, which is another excellent quality of the start of this particular day, and I pause to wonder if it has to do with the acupuncture I’d tried for the very first time this week? It was a strange experience, perhaps a tale for another time, and I am turning it over in my mind whether to go back for more… I dislike pain, and it may have helpled. I prefer “evidence-based medicine” – but have no requirement that the evidence be guided by, limited by, or informed by, “western medicine”. Medicine is medicine. Practices are practical inasmuch as what matters most is “does it work”? Even placebo effect can bring an individual real relief from real suffering… so… I don’t know. I suppose the time-money-pain variables and some committed study will eventually make my decision easier than it is at the moment. lol

I am beginning to feel quite settled in to the new place. I feel fairly at home here. I am pretty continuously aware that it is not actually mine. It makes me ache sometimes; it’s very much what I’d like in most respects. I could so easily make it my own. I smile understandingly at the thought. At 54, I should be planning my retirement, and I guess I sort of am, though I do not feel particularly well-prepared for it. Retirement is something we would do well to be planning as soon as we begin our professional lives, in early adulthood, but I suspect most of us are far too busy figuring out how to get enough laundry quarters together, pay off student loans, figure out how to make rent and utilities payments every month… Retirement is so far from our experience we foolishly believe we can put it off. There are a lot of folks, like me, who end up counting on their Social Security income as the bulk of their retirement planning. Scary. Still… I don’t want to work forever – hell, if I were financially prepared, I’d retire today. lol

One possible future is spent at ease in a garden…

I don’t know what the future looks like. No one does, really. We make all that shit up. Our “vision of the future” is hand-crafted narrative from start to finish, sometimes supported by fantastical unchecked assumptions and expectations of others that aren’t at all realistic. I find it hard to let go of the beautiful daydream of a future in which I’ve retired to write, and paint, and garden, happily sipping my morning coffee with my Traveling Partner, making conversation, making love… never mind that we’re both super cross before our coffee, and that I really like writing at that early morning hour while I sip mine (neither of which is conducive to conversation)… the fantasy future remains what it is. Where does it come from? Why does it linger? Is it truly what I want? Is what I want likely to fill my days with joy, or is that also just one more untested assumption?

One possible future is spent hiking remote trails…

I smile and let go of that daydream future long enough to contemplate the weekend immediately ahead; I will be The Traveler on this adventure. I will make my way to my partner’s home, and enjoy the weekend with him. Fuck, I love this guy! There is something ruinously amazing about being romantically sprung over my best friend. I’m eager to see him. Eager to chatter away about all the things he’s missed, to hear about all the things I’ve missed, to share and connect and get “synced up” again. To feel that natural rhythm of loving each other. To live and work and play together. To discuss. To create. To share. I could happily spend every waking moment in this human being’s company, and dream away every minute of every night in his arms… if I were a different person. LOL That’s the weird thing about daydreams of the future – just as often as I may overlook realities of other people, or realities of circumstances, when I dream of the future, I often also overlook very real qualities about the woman in the mirror, who she is, what she wants, what she needs – and how she actually experiences life and behaves day to day! Damned inconvenient. lol He’s right; I do thrive living alone. I’m right, too; I miss living with him, terribly. There is no particularly obvious or easy way to reconcile those observations. Silly human primates. I wonder what the future holds? I’m content with wondering.

One possible future includes leisurely travel with my Traveling Partner, seeing the world…

I sip my coffee and entertain myself imagining “alternate futures” with equal detail to what I might infuse in my favorite future fantasies. I keep my focus on the woman in the mirror – on being the woman I most want to be – and let the scene around me change. Am I living in poverty? It is one possible reality. I let myself imagine finding contentment alongside privation; I have been poor. I know what that feels like. I understand some of the constraints on my comfort and wellness I would likely face. It’s not my favorite daydream of the future. Am I living with a partner? Am I alone? Do I have a quiet little place of my own? Am I sharing a room in an adult care-providing establishment of some kind? Am I immobilized by unwellness of some kind? Am I stronger, fitter, funnier, angrier, thinner, fatter, happier, sadder, solitary, or the powerful matriarch of a vast social empire? (That last seems wildly unlikely, but somehow it made the list nonetheless. lol I recognize that as a common enough tendency of fantasy; go for the extreme if it promotes a chosen narrative.)

How many shards of daydreams of the future become choices in the moment, and eventually… memories? “I’m in the same place you guys are.” Seriously, aren’t we all? I mean – we’re human. It’s a very human experience. What will you practice? Who will you become?

What does the future look like?

Another morning suitable for beginning again. 🙂

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Categories Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, The Art of Being

Hand-Crafted Moments

August 30, 2017 //
0

The commute yesterday was ugly. I was calm. People drove badly. I drove calmly. The trip home was slow, traffic density was high, and it was a hot, muggy day. I arrived home… still calm. New. Nice. It was almost a pleasant drive in spite of the shitty traffic and terrible driving behavior of some of the other drivers. This was not a coincidence, or serendipity; I built those moments myself, with mindful awareness, non-judgmental compassion, and frequent reminders that we each see ourselves at the hero of our internal narrative, generally, and are each having our own experience. That jackass ahead of me, weaving back and forth over the yellow line? Human. Like me. Probably trying to see ahead – past the large truck ahead of him. Perspective. (I was still super glad that he finally turned off that road, and it was most definitely a bit annoying to see him stray over that yellow line again and again, but my annoyance was my own to deal with, and literally nothing to do with him.) The entire drive passed in this fashion.

I got home. I spent the evening relaxing, doing a couple things around the house – but mostly relaxing. I may have needed that more than I understood; I also went to bed a tad early, and without reading, or meditating, or any sort of dilly-dallying, was fast asleep so quickly I didn’t have time to consider the day. I woke to the alarm, rested, and feeling mildly distracted, as if torn from a pleasant dream. It’s been a lovely morning. I’ve taken good care of this fragile vessel, and the day starts well. I think I’ve finally come to a comfortable decision about the change in my transportation resources (having a car) and what kind of commuting options I have (both the driving sort, and the transit sort), and I’m finally ready to update my budget and my planning with the necessary details.

This morning, adulting feels rather comfortable and natural. It’s a nice change. I smile and sip my coffee and enjoy the moment of acknowledgement, and the feeling of ease. My smile deepens as I allow the awareness that, yes, “this too will pass” – even the pleasant bits are really fairly temporary. Always were. It’s totally okay. They come and go, and holding on ferociously can’t prolong them, it only makes the pain of their impermanence linger. So. This morning I feel light. I enjoy this carefully hand-crafted moment, as I did the moments in commuter traffic, or standing at the sink washing the dinner dishes, or standing in the shower feeling the water flow over my skin, or looking through my closet for something to wear and feeling content that anything I choose – I am still this person that I am, and I am loved. It’s nice. I highly recommend enjoying moments – and making the choices that result in more pleasant ones than unpleasant ones. There may be some verbs involved. Your results will likely vary (I know mine do). No doubt, you will have your own experience.

I look at the time. I’m eager to begin again. 🙂

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, Words
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