Archives for posts with tag: perspective
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Autumn Evening

October 29, 2015 //
0

I’d like this to be a lovely bit of prose, whimsical and poetic, about autumn and about evening. It isn’t at all. I’m not sure what it is yet, other than distracted and interrupted…but it is autumn, it is evening, and I am distracted and interrupted by the noise and conversation of the concrete finishing crew working immediately outside my front door at this very minute, shortly before 6:00 pm.

I dislike how near to the world, exposed, and vulnerable I feel with the workers so incredibly close that I can clearly hear their conversation and see their movement through the front blinds. I feel less safe, and less private. I know that I am adequately safe, and adequately private in my day-to-day experience. I know that when the work is finished this will once again be a quiet home. Right now? Right now this is nothing that can be described as quiet and I am annoyed to have to pay rent – when I feel, fairly often, that the most important thing to be paying for with the rent is the fucking privacy and quiet. Well, if nothing else, I have learned how very much I need my home to be a quiet place – surely the knowledge will stop me from buying a place that isn’t. (I can hope.)

A leisurely shower, dinner in the oven, unhurried yoga, a few minutes writing… it is a thoroughly pleasant evening when I am able to forget, however briefly, about the noisy workmen, or at least refrain from becoming emotionally invested in moments of annoyance or resentment. It’s worth maintaining perspective; the work being done benefits the entire community, and matters to me as well. The workmen are aware of me, and there has been sufficient communication that they are – when they think to be – making efforts to minimize how disrupting this is for me (and for my neighbors). They are quite a polite and considerate construction crew, generally – it’s still work, there are still verbs – and communication – involved. No way around it, some of this shit is disruptive; it’s not a personal attack. 🙂

A lovely autumn evening; little annoyances don't have to matter. I let them fall like leaves.

A lovely autumn evening; little annoyances don’t have to matter. I let them fall like leaves.

So here I am now. Relaxed. Content. Taking time for me, making room in my heart for awareness, perspective, and compassion, and generally enjoying my evening in spite of the noise, in spite of the disruptions, in spite of the shadows just behind the window blinds. It’s a pleasant evening, and there’s really nothing ‘extra’ that I need right now. This is enough. 🙂

 

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, 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

Small Differences Matter

October 25, 2015 //
0

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. 🙂

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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 //
0

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. 🙂

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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

Things That are Easy

October 15, 2015 //
0

There are things that are easy. Well…I mean…aside from me. Easy, I mean. 😉

I’m in a comfortably good mood, and enjoying the positive items in my Facebook feed; today is a spectacularly good day for my feed, and definitely worth enjoying. Then there’s the lovely autumn afternoon…sunny, mild, and festive with fall color.  The work day ended in a good way. I’m not in more pain than I can manage, and I am comfortable. My anxiety dissipated at some point, although I am not sure quite when. In general, it’s a pleasant evening – and I have cold pizza for dinner, which is one of my favorite foods.

There have been times when things have gone wrong, and it’s just lasted and lasted – days, weeks, worse – that’s rarely my experience these days, and I’ll say straight up that even though I still struggle with my chaos and damage, still feel frustrated to stumble on some broken bit unexpectedly, still mourn what isn’t when I could do better to enjoy what it is – it’s all so much better now, than it has been in the past. There have been no huge grandiose ‘changed overnight’ big deal improvements that suddenly ‘made everything okay’, and I don’t expect there will be. It’s all been small things, a bit at a time, some forward momentum, and moment to stumble, progress over days and weeks, then a really shitty day or two that messes with my mind and leaves me feeling uncertain and insecure.  The progress is real, though, and incremental change over time is a thing that has immense power to improve my experience – not just my experience in some one small circumstance, but even in my relationships, my self-talk, how things feel and look and taste, and how I enjoy my life from moment to moment, all alone. So worth it. Just saying.

One sunrise of many.

One sunrise of many.

Please take care of you. You matter. Keep practicing. Fall down. Begin again. I know you’ve got this. 🙂

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

Pits and Pitfalls

October 10, 2015 //
3

This morning is a very different morning than I had expected. I find myself sorely regretting allowing myself expectations, at all. I am struggling with this moment right here, when all evidence indicates that this moment right here isn’t a bad one taken in the context of nothing more than this moment.

I made a hash of the lovely morning I expected to be having with my partner. It’s that simple; a handful of insensitive words, poorly timed, and the whole thing goes sideways. Complicated fancy fucking monkeys. I feel frustrated with myself. Disappointed with the situation, and still struggling just to get a grip on the sudden spilling over of needlessly intense emotions into every damned thing. My demons dance happily in my tears; today they won. Now my head aches, and I can’t seem to stop these loathsome tears from falling. I am angry with myself for lacking ‘control’ – as if forcing myself to feel specific emotions, or display them quite correctly based on some set of rules, is the point of this whole mess. (It isn’t.) I am disappointed to have hurt my partner’s feelings – and being a fucking primate, I am admittedly even more disappointed to have blown my chances at having sex today. (We’re really good at it together, and I like it just about more than anything else, and it has become a rare thing for a number of reasons, not the least of which are simply geographical distance and calendar conflicts.) I am filled with regret and sorrow – which is a completely shitty emotional experience.

At least for the moment, I have lost touch with my sense of purpose or of progress. I feel stalled. I feel overwhelmed.

Getting it wrong first thing can be hard to take, but there is still a whole day ahead to work with. Choose.

Getting it wrong first thing can be hard to take, but there is still a whole day ahead to work with. Choose.

…We didn’t even finish our coffees together; the realization launches a flood of new tears, and they cascade down my cheeks, hot, plentiful, and resented. I cry more when I notice that I forgot to ask him to help me put on my locket; my fingers haven’t successfully worked the clasp for two days now, and I ache with a strange subtle hurt every time I notice I am not wearing it.

He didn’t leave me alone like this willingly. I sent him away. I write those words through even more tears. What the fuck is wrong with me? I don’t feel any sense of the progress made over time. I seem unable to connect with how good I have felt lately, or how well-loved. I feel cut off from intimacy – and it’s self-inflicted, a byproduct of the combination of my chaos and damage, and an injury so old I don’t understand why am still dealing with it now.  I am child-like with my misery, weeping unreservedly until I’m all cried out.

Sometimes it's hard to focus on the distant horizon when the shadows and silhouettes of the chaos and damage seem so near.

Sometimes it’s hard to focus on the distant horizon when the shadows and silhouettes of the chaos and damage seem so near.

The phone rings. He reaches out to tell me it wasn’t all me, and it’s a message I need to hear. I don’t understand it as a given that when we interact we’re both in it, both involved, both using verbs – and words. We both forget about my injury – and the unfortunate resulting lack of impulse control, and the peculiar communication challenges that are much more significant when I am first waking up. He’s gentle with me over the phone, reassuring, reminding me that love is, and that he loves me; this is a shared journey, as much as any journey can be. I still have this headache. It will pass. I will be okay – I am, in fact, actually okay in this moment right here. I make a point of expressing appreciation that I am able to [emotionally] safely and comfortably ask him to go when I need to take care of me – that’s not something everyone has in their relationships. I still feel like a dick for being insensitive and hurting his feelings; it is irrelevant to feeling hurt whether that hurt was delivered willfully or cluelessly. Hurting hurts.

So. Here I am, alone, and mostly feeling pretty crappy with an entire autumn weekend stretching before me, nothing on my calendar, no plans, nothing that much gets my attention to do with my time; this is not a weekend to be running away from me with entertaining distractions. I’ve logged off of Facebook. Logged off of my social media accounts. No announcement or vaguebooking statement required; I am just taking some time for quiet and stillness. There are very few things that help with this particular shit storm of emotional disregulation; meditation is the most powerful tool in my arsenal, alongside cannabis. My Love arrived before I had time for either, and before my prescription Rx for my pain management, or my thyroid condition had time to be effective. The timing of his visit was itself enough to increase the risk that something would go wrong. We both know a lot about my limitations in that first 90 minutes or so after I wake; we made choices based on how much we miss each other, how much we want each other, and the convenience of opportunity. 😦

I am still working on me.

I am still working on me.

I’m not writing all this down to evoke pity or sympathy – if you find yourself feeling either, I thank you for your good nature, and your concern. I’m okay – well, I feel pretty ick right now, but I will be okay. I am taking the time to share this for two reasons: the most important and first reason is that ‘using my words’ is a perspective-providing tool that tends to most efficiently help me dial down the ferocity of my emotions. I make an effort to be quite clear, and reasonable, and careful to be truthful, accurate, and fair to other people when I write a blog post. When I write in my private journal, I am more prone to spiraling negative self-talk, or skewed perspective that can be punishing, or accusatory – neither is helpful, and both have the potential to build damaging narrative that fuels drama. The second reason to take the time to write about the hard stuff, the bullshit, the hurting, and the chaos is also about perspective; it’s not easy to cope with and rehabilitate a brain injury, and it’s not easy working through the hurting of PTSD.  There are verbs involved. My results vary. Change and growth over time are incremental…and sometimes the increments are fucking small. It can be very discouraging, and I think there is value in being real about the work involved. It won’t always be easy – it may not ever be easy – but there is value in trudging through, practicing the practices, and beginning again when I falter. (You, too.)

I’m fortunate to have such a strong partnership with someone who really does love me supporting me emotionally through all this, and realistically I can’t help but be aware that there is some risk this love won’t survive my struggles; at some point it may really just be too much to ask. That’s part of what hurts so much; there’s no knowing with certainty when that point has been reached, until I get there. Scary.

Begin again.

Begin again.

Today is a good day to take care of this fragile vessel, and to take another step on this journey; the steps add up. Today is a good day to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, grief, Love, medical marijuana, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »