Archives for posts with tag: you’re not my supervisor
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Quality and Quantity

March 15, 2015 //
2

I’ve got my dark moments, and certainly I have occasional doubts that ‘it’ is ‘worth it’ at all; it is the struggle that still fuels so much of my writing. Emotions can be intense, unexpected, and they cover a grand spectrum of human experience, so having a few that are unpleasant seems a given. While those things are what they are, I appreciate life, generally, and actually hope to live a very long time; I’ve often said I’d like to be around for 2083…I’d be 120. That’s a lot of living. Years and years of living in fact, surely qualifying as ‘a long time’. It seems doable, given ideal conditions; the oldest person living today is getting pretty close to that 120 mark, herself, and reportedly people have lived longer. As goals go, it’s hard to beat ‘live a long time’.

With potentially another 70 or so years to go, it changes the face of my perspective on living…I spent about a decade as a child, and another 10 years honing my skills to be recognizably adult (although lacking in life experience)…finally reaching 21, which wasn’t of particular value or legitimate significance; I was already a soldier, already unhappily married, already able to drink, already owned a car and a house, already voting – and still just as likely to be discouraged from using, or prohibited from having, the decision-making power of autonomy over reproduction and sexual values – because that’s how women are often treated, regardless of age, but most especially as young adult women. I spent my 20s rather wastefully racking up experiences of a variety of sorts without any particular reflection or personal growth. I took a lot of damage. I inflicted some of it on myself.

"Broken" 14" x 18" acrylic and mixed media with glow.

“Broken” 14″ x 18″ acrylic and mixed media with glow.

I entered my 30s exiting a violent marriage, without much to show for it besides a small number of very special possessions I would cling to with great care for decades to come, only to see some of the most precious of those rare positive mementos lost to the destructive force, or disregard, of others farther along on life’s journey. (Attachment is a losing game.)

I fell in love for the first time in my 30s, and although I recognized the experience as being significant, it didn’t last. It likely wouldn’t have lasted even if I had had the skills to nurture it at the time, it was built on a shaky foundation.

Time passes. I’ve grown. Changed. Built on what seems to be working. Torn down a lot of what wasn’t working at all. I’m in a very different place than I once was…and still the journey continues.  I have a lot less to show for 52 years than many people do (and more than others). I don’t own a home of my own. I don’t own a car of my own. I am not prepared for retirement in any adequate fashion. 100% of everything I own at this point in my life will fit in a modest sized bedroom – what isn’t furniture fits in a closet, if the art is hanging on the walls. Most of my possessions are paintings, or books, and a few boxes of precious crystal and porcelain breakables that are for now put away for safety. It hasn’t always been this way, and when I am not mindful of the risk of ‘second dart suffering’ related to attachment and loss, contemplating the losses over time carries quite an emotional punch. My brain is willing to attack me on this tender spot; I have sometimes chosen poorly, and I am living the outcome of those choices.

I am walking my own path; sometimes it seems clear, sometimes less so.

I am walking my own path; sometimes it seems clear, sometimes less so.

I am not where I want to be in life. On the other hand… I’ve got 70 years or so to get there, and I’m in a better place from which to move forward. 70 years to understand what matters most to me. 70 years to be fitter, wiser, healthier, calmer. 70 years to learn to love more skillfully, and to invest in growth. 70 years to make better choices. 70 years to build, to grow, to change… 70 years to practice. The saying is ‘practice makes perfect’ – what am I perfecting? What do I want of my life? This is not a question anyone can answer for me, and it has been a grave mistake in judgment in past moments of ennui, hurt, or chaos, to abdicate my role, or to compromise, in making the choices about what that desired life looks like for me.

Building the path as I walk it.

Building the path as I walk it; how else? No one knows my journey like I do…

I’m feeling some better this morning, though I slept badly. I’ll nap later, perhaps. I’ll spend the day doing laundry, preparing for my camping trip – if I go, the ‘last minute’ preparations [for me] happen today. If I find I am too sick to go, I will have spent a chill fun day playing with my camping gear – I don’t see that it is really any different from if I were a kid playing with any other sort of toys, housebound with a head cold on a rainy day. 🙂  I am hopeful that I’ll still be going camping – it’s the Vernal Equinox, missing out is kind of … well… missing out; there’s only one each year. This camping trip is a bit more than a weekend; 4 nights, 4 days, and a chance to meditate at length and at leisure, and to consider what I want of my life. (The future is here, and it’s always a good time to choose more wisely about the future than I did in the past.)

More questions than answers, and seeking illumination with a beginner's mind...

More questions than answers, and seeking illumination with a beginner’s mind…

This is the basic question I will be considering on this trip – in case you want to take it for a test drive, yourself: – If I could know with certainty that I will be living another 70 years, am I content with the life I am living right now? If not, what will I change to live the life I most want to live? What qualities of my day-to-day experience are precious to me? What do I change to experience more of those things? Yep. Fundamentally it the same question I have been asking throughout 2015; what do I want of my life? It is one question that simply isn’t ever about anyone but me. Life isn’t a bus ride, it’s more like a solo hike. The will, the direction, the motive power, and the resources over time, are mine. The choices? Also mine. I enjoy sharing my life with love and lovers…this, though, is my journey; I am the cartographer, the map is of my own making, the destination, too, must be of my choosing, sharing some portion of the journey does not change that.

The map is not the world...but the journey may be the destination.

The map is not the world…but the journey may be the destination.

Today is a very good day to live my life on my own terms. Isn’t it always? Today is a good day to treat the world well, while finding my own way. Today is a good day for good-natured acceptance of the humanity of others, and to be content that their decision-making is likely to differ from my own. Today is a good day for good self-care, and healthy indulgence of things that feel good – and do no harm to others. Today is a good day to be the person I most want to be – when I can – and to dust off my knees when I stumble, and keep going. Today is a good day to choose my own path, and to walk it. Today is a good day to change my world.

Is enlightenment found in embracing contentment in this precious moment?

Seeking illumination, I am content to find lightness of being.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Big 5, Uncategorized, women, Words

Time, Space, and Distance

December 21, 2014 //
0

Learned helplessness sucks. It’s a common enough byproduct of surviving certain sorts of trauma. The frustration that can surge to the forefront of my experience due to complications of struggling with learned helplessness is akin to the nuclear blast of emotional weaponry; sudden, unreasonably forceful, and laying waste to the pleasant now that might have been. When I am simply doing my best to manage, day-to-day, and doing so with some measure of success, other things that need to be attended to may fall by the wayside; I can only do so much, moment to moment. My will falls short in the struggling, you see. I give up. Learned helplessness is a very real thing.

I wrote some days ago about my environment degrading, and that being a sign of ongoing stress, and a need to take care of me, more skillfully. I spent yesterday restoring order to the chaos of my environment. It feels very nice to handle that bit of business, and my surroundings are orderly, clean, tidy, and quite to my taste, generally. What I need is at hand. What I don’t need, has been put away. The effort to restore order in my environment results in renewed enthusiasm to keep it so, as well as ‘clearing my head’ for a whole host of other things that would benefit from being handled sooner than later.

I woke later than usual this morning, and took my medication later as a result. I am now taking care of me – and my loved ones – by taking sufficient time solo for my medication to kick in, and to wake up, and find my voice before I impose myself on their experience. Yes, that level of consideration matters to me; some women don’t leave the house before they ‘put their face on’, I avoid interacting with people before my brain has entirely come back online, and my level of pain is as addressed by medication as it will be, for the day. Taking the time I need really matters to me, and failing to do so changes my experience in a reliably unpleasant way.

The only snowflake I'm likely to see this holiday season.

Let it snow…

I recently got an email from an ex. A large measure of my PTSD is related to relationship trauma, and domestic violence, and I don’t have a comfortable experience of exes reaching out from the past, generally. I felt very anxious reading the email, and feel anxious considering it after the fact, too. This ex, this time, reached out to inquire – 4 years after the break up – whether I have any of her antique holiday ornaments. I was filled with complicated emotions that began with irritation and anger; when we divided our property I had specifically asked what holiday ornaments she wanted and was firmly and specifically told that the holidays would no longer have any meaning, and that she wanted no part of them. The anger became mixed with some measure of humor, and bewilderment; we’d never owned any antique ornaments together, at all. She had a few small handmade figurines, made by her Mother, and those were so clearly hers that taking them with me wasn’t even something I considered. I had a small number of handcrafted ornaments my own Mother made, and had given to me. The rest of our ornaments were common enough glass ornaments, some traditional sorts that I purchased my first holiday alone after I left my first husband, few of which actually remain, and some interestingly non-traditional sorts that continue to delight and amuse me with their whimsy. Still, I carefully checked the tree, decked out for the holidays, to see if ornaments dear to her had remained with me. I didn’t find any, and my journal entries of the time indicate that I had taken pains to carefully box the ornaments that were peculiarly ‘hers’ and left them behind for her when I moved out. I replied kindly that I didn’t have the ornaments she was looking for, and reminded her that we hadn’t had any antiques that I could recall. I made an effort not to read subtext into her reply, and have since tried to let it go. You can see the effort to do so has been only marginally successful; I feel angry that she even asked, and helpless to act on that in a way that is appropriate, effective, and needful. My logical brain tells me that I already have – so let it go, already. My heart says ‘this was so not cool!!’ and wants to do/say more. That was probably the point in the first place, making it even more wise to just let it drop without another word.

My level of physical pain the past couple of days has been very high. I hurt enough to affect my experience moment to moment, and although the effort to be compassionate and kind to others nonetheless is entirely worth it, I also find myself struggling not to resent how clueless people around me seem to be about the fact that I am indeed in that much pain. Sometimes I just want to lay down and weep, I hurt that much. It doesn’t help, though. I sometimes want to plead with people around me “please just be patient with me, please be kind to me – I just hurt, is all!”, but it hasn’t been my experience that it makes much difference; they are having their own experience.

Time to get the day started…laundry, putting away things that were relocated out of my personal space during yesterday’s cleaning, writing holiday letters…all the makings of a fulfilling quiet day. Today is a good day to take care of me, on my own terms. Today is a good day to change how I feel in the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

More Stormy Weather

November 13, 2014 //
0

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

Highs and Lows

September 17, 2014 //
0

Today I’m feeling pretty low, waking with a vicious headache, and memories of last night. I don’t care for drama so exploring the details isn’t on the agenda today. Is it enough to say I’m human? That I have moments of self-doubt, moments when things that made so much sense some other day don’t make sense right now? Times of struggle and heartache? I am, after all, grieving… that colors life somewhat, doesn’t it? I’m asking because, at 51, sometimes I don’t feel like I know the answers to some of these questions.

...There's still sky overhead...and possibilities.

…There’s still sky overhead…and possibilities.

Lonely in a crowd? Yeah, this has some of that feel to it. Uncertain about the future? Yep, I’ve got that, too. I feel sad. I feel challenged by life’s curriculum in a similar way to what I imagine it might be like to wander into a college physics class at some tender age, without any academic preparation, and being told my grade depends on the day’s pop quiz. My partners are good people. This morning the tears on my face and the splitting headache I woke with go hand in hand with my doubt that I qualify to make that team.

Death sometimes has an unexpectedly insistent way of making us look closely at our own life. What do I want out of mine, truly? Where am I headed? What is the trajectory of my choices, and where are they taking me? Is this what I what? Is it what will best meet my needs over time? I don’t have good answers to these questions either, and I feel adrift. Oddly, this does not make me eager to see my therapist, instead, a profound urge to ‘leave it all behind’ builds, but I don’t know what I really mean by that. I’m too old to ‘run away from home’ and the sorts of baggage I have are neatly chained to me, going along for the journey everywhere I go.

Each day dawns, entirely new, filled with potential and choices.

Each day dawns, entirely new, filled with potential and choices.

This one’s difficult. My skilled brain tries to tell me I will be okay, that “this too shall pass”. Mindfulness… well… yeah. It’s getting to be easier and more habitual. Mindfulness in moments like these doesn’t often do much to ‘make it stop hurting’. Opening my own heart to this experience of hurting and making room for it, and being compassionate with myself are not the simplest of tasks – particularly after an evening of being castigated for imperfect execution of practices that serve me so well other times, other days. So, I sit here allowing the tears with a certain irritated resignation, and doing what I can to be kind to myself, and understand that it’s all a lot to take, and that being human is the nature of my experience. I focus on me, my experience, what I need from me to feel nurtured and supported. There’s that emotional self-sufficiency piece rearing its head again, too. Would I cry less if I met more of my own needs? Maybe tears are what I have to count on? Where is the line between working through grief and trauma appropriately to heal, and ‘being a victim’ – is that a matter of perspective? I feel like I was headed for summer vacation and the teacher just handed me Moby Dick, War and Peace, and Atlas Shrugged and said “see you in two weeks”. Being a student of life and love doesn’t really end with ‘graduation’ – there’s always more to learn. I kind of wish I weren’t a ‘C student’, though, this shit is hard.

So. Today I am alone. In a sense, I always am; we are each having our own experience. That can be a very lonely thing, sometimes. It is, right now.

I’ll spend the weekend out in the trees, in the stillness, breathing, safe, content; I may not ‘figure it all out’, but I’ll get a break from everything that hurts except the stuff I carry with me. That I just have to deal with. It’ll be a few days, maybe, before I write here again. I won’t have access to the internet – the trees don’t use Facebook, they simply stand in stillness, content. Or something poetic like that. Anyway. I guess I’ve ‘run out of words’ for now.

What is there to say about a sunrise? It is, in a sense, the only 'do over' we get; a new day.

What is there to say about a sunrise? It is, in a sense, the only ‘do over’ we get; a new day.

No affirmations, today, they would feel hollow to me this morning – and if nothing else, I am genuine. Today I hurt.

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Uncategorized, women

Inspiration

August 7, 2014 //
0

I personally find feeling ‘inspired’ to be a strange state that is neither cause nor effect in any clear and specific way. Sometimes I am inspired by something…which seems an effect, obviously, but I’m not always certain what inspired me. Other times, although I feel inspired I don’t act on it, and it causes nothing, existing merely as a state of being, or sensation. I’m often deeply inspired. I write. I paint. I take photographs. I craft small sculptures. I organize objects in space in a visually pleasing (to me) way. I build and craft things. I am a creative being. I consider myself an artist, and a writer. I write and take pictures pretty nearly every day that I am awake… painting is different. I am often moved to paint, but I only follow through when I have the physical space to work in comfortably, the time to set up and tear down and clean up afterward (having no permanent studio space), and exist in the context of an emotional experience that feels consistent with the inspiration driving my desire to paint; it’s that last one that makes or breaks whether I paint. That last one is as non-negotiable as breathing, and is less a choice of will than a limitation in ability.

Inspiration takes so many forms... flowers...

Inspiration takes so many forms… flowers…

---landscapes...

…landscapes…

...a quality of light...

…a quality of light…

...a metaphor...

…a metaphor…

...an emotion.

…an emotion.

This weekend I am painting. I’m excited about it, and my consciousness is saturated with inspiration – paintings and ideas that have been lurking in the shadows waiting their turn, queue up with exciting new ideas that arose in the hours since it became a certainty that I’d have the time and space to paint in solitude. At least for now, solitude is the only assurance of having that elusive emotional context within which I paint.

I’ve got inspiration…images…canvas…paint…time…space… and no idea of what will have come of it, when I shake off the drop cloths, fold them up, put away the paint and brushes, and acknowledge that the weekend has ended.  I know I am excited, now. I enjoy the feeling of anticipation, and the internal pressure of increasing inspiration, ideas on ideas, and the fun of making quick notes – not wanting to let a moment of further inspiration ‘get away’.

This will be my first serious exploration of mindfulness, perspective, and sufficiency in my work as a painter. I don’t know what it means to make that observation, and I don’t know what it will mean for my art. I haven’t done much painting living in this particular location, a mere handful of paintings over almost 3 years, and my last productive opportunity to paint was before I got to where I am, now, as a person. I am approaching the weekend with a beginner’s mind, and wide-eyed wonder. What will come of this? I guess I’ll know on Sunday. 🙂

There's always time for a moment of wonder.

There’s always time for a moment of wonder.

Today is a good day to try something new. Today is a good day to be eager, to be delighted, and to share the moment. Today is a good day for art, a good day for journeys, and a good day to love. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Summer
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