The Year of Yes
Red velvet, to be exact. Not from scratch, but pretty darn good anyway, according to a Sweetie or two.
Of course if you are A Sweetie, you might find that the decorations your mother went with are a little lacking. Fresh raspberries always make a piece of cake better.
There’s plenty, and I can’t eat much because I have to fit into my show outfits in a couple of weeks. So y’all come on over.
Getting ready for this:
Why yes, my hair HAS grown since last year! Why ever do you ask???
Anyway, wish you were here. The show’s gonna be totally freakin’ awesome.
On this date, one year ago, I became, legally, myself again. I mean, I was always myself (anyone want to shout out “NO MATTER HOW THIN YOU SLICE IT, IT’S STILL BALONEY!!!!”? hehe). But a year ago I became JUST myself legally.
So it’s been a year that I’ve been breathing a little deeper, feeling a little freer, finding little streams of happiness inside me that I didn’t know were there… and it’s been a year of knowing that I am really OK. Just as me.
I feel happier driving down the road. I feel happier sitting on the sofa. I feel happier watching my kids’ dance class. I feel happier singing. I feel happier when I breathe.
It’s probably not noticeable. It’s just that I am not fighting myself, or struggling against some inner desire to be free, or worried about how it will be when I get free, or feeling guilty or ashamed that I am “doing this…” I just feel happy.
Happy.
“You can’t get it wrong and you’ll never get it done.” This is a paraphrase of an Abe-Hicks quote my first therapist used with me in our very first session. She actually had me write it down. At the time I was deep in the closet and completely convinced I could do no right. The quote was one of the things that kept me alive during those difficult times. I kept that piece of paper for years. It meant so much to me to have someone reflect back the best of me, the part of me I didn’t believe existed.
I’ve been revisiting this concept recently. In the past year I shifted away from some things that made my life internally rich, as I moved toward more outward action. It seemed that outward action was the thing to do. But I remember before that outward action time, I spent a great deal of time feeling compressed inside my own life. As a result of feeling like I couldn’t act in any direction, I cultivated the inner habit of imagining and being open to things coming my way – even impossible things.
Well, at some point some impossible things did come my way. Some really good things came my way, some completely unexpected wonderful things that even now I can’t describe adequately in words. And some really scary things came my way, things that I tried to describe in words but even so, the totality of the experience could never, it seems, be reflected in the words I would use to describe what was happening.
As part of this, I think I lost the “go inward” strategy that had been my lifeline for so long. And as I’ve pondered reclaiming that, over the course of the last few months, it has seemed that there has been some part of my experience that wouldn’t fit that model. There would always have to be a place where I would have to be tough and closed, rather than open. There would always have to be a place where I would have to be shut down, rather than alive inside. And there would always have to be a place where I would have to be on alert for danger.
But what if I could alter my response in some way? What if, in the space in my life where I think I have to be tough and closed, I do the opposite and open wide? What if, instead of shutting down, I wake up in as extreme a fashion as I have shut down? And what if, instead of being alert for danger, I look at every single situation as a chance to ask myself the question “what feels best?” in response? So then it’s not about danger or lack thereof; it’s not about coldness or warmth; and it’s not about toughness or softness. Instead, it’s about acknowledging that my inner life has a power that spins out farther than my conscious mind can grasp. And it’s about acknowledging that daydreams, imagination, and intuition are more about the architecture of my inner world than the structure of the outer life. My daily life may change again and again and again. But if I try to build my life from the outside in, then I’m denying the power of the core identity and the internal spark that can bring a strength found nowhere else. So then, if I instead build my life on what I find inside, I may find that the outer life shifts in all sorts of unexpected ways – and that will be OK because the inner world provides the structure for the outer.
This feels good as I write about it. It feels good to consider the possibility that my inner life will always matter more, influence the outer life more, and have more power, than anything that might come my way from outside of myself.
I can feel the pilot light coming back on…
I. don’t. ever. get. sick. EVER.
Except this week.
Bwaaaaaaahhhhh!!!
I promise to form coherent thoughts and put them in blog post format as soon as possible. In the meantime, those with whom I correspond off blog will attest to the fact that I’m doin’ y’all a favor by not trying to say anything meaningful right now.
Back soon. I hope!
I’m familiar with the dictum that one ought not make major decisions in times of emotional crisis. I’m new to the experience of how to decide action in the face of other changes. So far in my life I have been extremely healthy, except for a major upheaval around the birth of my children.
Some of the echoes of that time, combined with some, err, favorable family history, have now presented themselves in the form of high blood pressure – that most common of American conditions. Fortunately, I will be fine. I have excellent medical care, and the very family history which led to this eventuality also indicates that (all other things being equal) I will live a long and largely completely healthy life.
At the same time, this first big indication that I am not in fact as young as I once was, has brought me to a greater state of emotional disequilibrium than I like to admit. I went through a life-threatening version of this eight and a half years ago. Now I find that I want to place some sort of responsibility on something less ineffable than family history. I keep casting about emotionally for something I can discard from my life in an effort to make this go away. As recently as a few years ago, I could simply turn my attention to any of my favorite subjects and my blood pressure would become normal, even if it had been elevated mere moments before. That doesn’t happen anymore.
And so I keep looking for almost anything I can find to jettison emotionally in order to bring calm, order, normal blood pressure. It’s completely irrational at this point. I’m responding as expected to the medication (and it’s a version of a medication performers often take just for performance anxiety, which is kind of funny since I have absolutely no stage fright whatsoever).
The thing is, I’ve found myself stopping on the edge of making major decisions about my life that I know I would later regret. Outwardly I don’t think it shows. But it kind of shocks me to catch myself on the cusp of doing or saying something I know I’d be really upset about within a short time.
It’s just that I keep thinking I did this to myself, so if I can just turn my life upside down or inside out, I’ll undo it. Well, the main two things I did to bring this on were to be born into the biology I inherited, and then to have a twin pregnancy. And I don’t really want to change any of those two things (let’s assume for just a second that I could…). So where does that leave me?
I think I am emotionally revisiting some of the shock of what I went through around the girls’ birth. It was really scary. I remember a nurse telling me I couldn’t get up or I would have a stroke (the doctor later said that was an exaggeration, but at the time, with the nurse physically positioning me back into bed, it made a pretty big impression!). I remember being on more medications than I could name; major surgery; babies born very healthy but a little bit early; and having a husband who spent all his time going between my room and the nursery. I remember crying and begging to see my babies, and finally being given permission to see them after 48 hours.
I remember being so swollen that it took four months to have feet that looked normal again. I remember my babies being sleepy, not nursing as effectively as they would have if they’d started right away, the nursing/pumping whirl that went around the clock. I remember being so exhausted that I wouldn’t even wake when my babies cried, until my husband shook me awake. I remember being awake, in a sort of half twilight that happens when you only sleep three hours out of every 24, and those three non-consecutively. I remember learning to care for two babies while trying to recover from almost dying.
So now, I have the echoes of that time in my body, returning to remind me that I’m human, that I’m not going to be able to forget that time.
But I’m glad my dad is my dad. And I’m glad my children are here. My dad is healthy. My children are healthy. And – with some extra help – I, too, am getting healthy.
Maybe my life is fine on its current track. Even with its messiness and loose ends and all of the unknowns, and even with – maybe especially with – the stuff that really really bugs me. And maybe even with a decision or two made out of emotion. Maybe.
I wonder, can I do it? I am not sure I believe that I can. I don’t know that I’m acting as if I can.
Fragile and flighty are two terms that have been used by key folks in my life to describe me in my younger days. In fact, I’ve spent my adult life doing everything possible to exude strength and stability, because those two descriptors seem to chase me constantly, nipping at my heels with an eagerness to take over my psyche with impulsiveness and recklessly destructive behavior.
But these two words have not ever really described my internal state or my behavior. As a child and especially as a teen, my self and my actions were more about doing as well as possible in the things I considered important; while attending to family needs in a way that I had no business doing.
To be completely over-responsible and strong for everyone around me, and then called flighty and fragile by those who borrowed my strength, should have been an obvious giveaway. But I was young and didn’t know any different life. And now, in my mid-forties, I’m realizing how much of that “be strong and stable and take care of everyone” mentality I have lived out.
In the meantime, my inner landscape has not been a meadow filled with yellow flowers, or for that matter (and on the other hand) a borg cube. Instead it’s been a place of self-doubt. Can I be stable enough, responsible enough, can I be steady, can I avoid flitting from activity to activity or decision to decision on a whim?
Well, the result in my behavior has been that I move so slowly it surprises people. People in my life now, who didn’t know my younger life and didn’t hear me called those things, think of me as incredibly stable, unchangeable, steady, consistent. I’ve prided myself on my capacity to be both flexible and steady, adaptable and strong.
But I think I may just be running from old demons. I’ve been reluctant to say what I want in key situations in my life for fear of appearing impulsive and disorderly and disrespectful. I’ve held at bay key dreams, even in my mind, believing that I can’t be steady enough to make them happen. I’ve turned the courage of my coming out into a further exhibit in the gallery of flightiness, and I’ve told myself I don’t deserve any part of what I had before I came out.
It comes down to not regarding myself as lovable, and not putting myself in the position to receive, acknowledge, or accept what caring may come. Instead I’ve made myself a fortress and then wondered why my existence feels solitary even at times when I do not seek solitude.
I don’t know if letting down the castle gate, so to speak, of my true self, will bring love or attack. I don’t know if it will bring devastating indifference.
But the thing is, I can do stable. I can do steady. I can do strong. I can do the things that make for a solid personal and work and life reputation. I can do that. I wonder, can I do trust? Can I do vulnerable? Can I put myself in a position where I might be some color other than strong?
Most of my dreams depend on the answer being YES or at least PLEASE DO TRY. I’m afraid to even dream some of my dreams these days. But I am going to go with the PLEASE DO TRY option and see where it takes me. At the very least, perhaps I can turn the childhood messages on their ear and move into what I think of as flighty and fragile. Maybe I can let myself melt into those descriptors and dream even from inside them. Maybe what I have called flighty and fragile are behaviors that were so out of place for a teen that those who required that strength and care-taking from me had to call me flighty and fragile in order not to face the monstrousness of what they required of me. So maybe if I move toward flighty, fragile, impulsive, changeable – maybe if I move toward those words as I understand them in my life and experience, I’ll find that I’m OK under there. A little overworked, even, maybe.
I hope so – ’cause right now it’s achy and lonely underneath all this strength. And I’d like to at least give myself permission to daydream that I’m soft and vulnerable and capable of (deserving of) being cared for, as well as for caring.
It seems to me that most of this should be an internal thing, but I don’t know how to play it out except on the larger stage of my external life. We’ll see.
I’ve been racing my way through, you know, that seven-book series that was all the rage for almost a decade there. Late to the party as ever, but girl do I make up for lost time once I arrive! I’m halfway through book 7 (which is helladepressing, yowza!) and I expect to have my evenings free for blogging again soon. (sob)
Not that I don’t lurv y’all. Really. I just. can’t. stop. reading. My daughter is reading her way through too, and she’s halfway through book 2 and still trying to identify all the possible flavors of Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. So far her favorite line from the books she’s read is “Alas! Earwax!” Extra points for the commenter who identifies the person who said that.
Anyway. More real stuff later. Just wanted to let folks know I’m alive and well and so forth.
I usually insert a photo or video here, but I’m afraid that if I insert a photo or video of the relevant topic in this space my blog will get falsely elevated numbers. I’m already over the top with people trying to find Claudia Black and Denise Richards. Bwaha.
Ohhhh yeah. I’m remembering why I let myself stop dreaming. Why I let myself do just about anything other than dreaming. Well, surely, I was dealing with some big life events in the past year or so. But take that away, and what’s left?
It’s that old belief rising up that says that if I dream something, believe something, want something, there must be something wrong with me, or the thing I’m dreaming. And to continue to dream it is simply to prove that I’m delusional, and intrusive, and about to behave in ways that are completely unacceptable.
Oh yeah. THAT old friend is back. The one who whispers in my ear that it’s not OK to think what I think, feel what I feel, want what I want, dream what I dream. Yeah, all together now, “with friends like that who needs…” you know the rest of it.
So – there it is. I remember my dreams, and I feel good. I start to shape them, and I feel dreadful. So far, there has been no one surefire way to discover reassurance that I’m not in fact intruding or abusing with my life, my dreams, my presence. It’s a battle on several fronts.
First of all, just letting myself dream. That’s important, regardless of what I do. Sometimes it just has to be enough to let myself dream it, even if I do nothing about it.
Second, reminding myself that the times when I have behaved badly toward others have been far outweighed by the times I have behaved well toward others. I usually do right by folks. Not always, but usually. Usually enough that I can probably count on myself. Really. Note to self: believe this a little harder.
Third, going ahead and finding some small thread of the dream to live now – and pursuing it. Even if it doesn’t give any outward evidence of dream pursuit. I know this from my years of apparent non-action. In reality a whole lot was going on under the surface, and when it came to the surface it was, in a very real sense, already done.
Fourth, breathe, breathe, breathe.
Fifth, accept all the parts of me, and yes this includes the me that has in fact behaved badly toward others – that part of me that I most want to reject. Accept it all, and just keep accepting.
Sixth, no need to rush. Just – dream.
Remember. I will try to remember.
Try To Remember from The Fantasticks
Music: Harvey Schmidt / Lyrics: Tom Jones
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.
Editing to add – my trip down musical memory lane led to this gem sung by Madeline Kahn. You just absolutely GOTTA WATCH. For real. It’s got nuthin’ to do with the above post, but never mind. Watchwatchwatchwatchwaaaaatch. They don’t make ‘em like Madeline anymore. Bwahahaha
I’ve been thinking, again, about what the recent changes in my life MEAN. They seem to have sprung up rather all at once, after a long long loooong time of almost no action at all. Within six months I made two trips to visit my father (I’d been afraid to go see him for years before that); I moved to my own place; and my job situation changed (again!). At the same time that I was bringing my father and brother back into my life, I was working to keep my mother out. This was as much a matter of will power as it was a matter of planning, because I felt the old all-too-familiar pull of old guilt and a sense of responsibility for her well-being.
But these months of change have gone smoothly, for the most part. That is to say, the children have responded with an astounding lack of – well, of anything that would seem to indicate that their lives have gone off the rails in any way. They just keep being themselves.
It’s not really fair to base my entire sense of how the transition has gone on the children, since that’s not an accurate reading of the entire situation or all the players involved – but it’s the first one that comes to mind. When it comes to the extended family, those others who also love and care for the children, they have done well with the changes too.
And then there’s me. I have been on a sort of auto pilot, I think, since I came back from my first trip to see my father back in the early fall. It was then that the big change, the move, happened. And so many things have just kind of fallen into place since then.
So now I am looking around and wondering what’s next? And I think what’s next is, as the title says, losing it. I’m not talking about losing my mind or losing my shit or whathaveyou, though I don’t rule out the possibility. Heh. I’m thinking of losing some baggage that I brought along on this big transition.
When I look back, I think the big transition really started when two big things happened a year ago: I started working on my divorce; and simultaneously my mother moved nearby to rescue me from whatever her explanation-du-jour was that I needed rescuing from. So on the one hand I spent several months becoming more and more and more myself; while on the other hand I spent several months working harder and harder to simultaneously relate to and protect my children from my mother.
It was in the midst of the most intense part of this that I began connecting more with my father, so there was that new element of family relationships going on as well.
During those months, when I was changing so much, I took on some strong protective behaviors. I felt so much stress that I ate a lot more, especially at night. I had some anxiety medication that my doctor had told me was designed to be taken as needed (unlike many of the medications which need to be taken regularly and monitored regularly as well) – and I started taking it every single day. I had been feeling myself to be a loving, lovable, and (dare I say it here? eh why not) even sexy sort of a person – and that all pretty much went out the window as I dealt with the continuous onslaught of my mother’s presence and verbal abuse.
Nevertheless, I had the euphoria of finishing up my divorce, of reconnecting with my dad, traveling with the children, singing more and more, and finding my own place – and I found stability too, in standing my ground and holding a large perimeter beyond which no one who mistreated me could pass.
Now here I sit, wondering what’s next. I look back at the years I spent daydreaming about where I am now, and believing it could not possibly be, and simultaneously feeling so sad about that belief while berating myself for ever dreaming. So I look ahead and feel the big dreams emerging again, waiting to be dreamed… and I feel that old familiar guilt/self-berating pattern again.
And I wonder – can I lose it? Can I lose the guilt and shame and just dream? Can I lose the physical protection that the overeating and the medication gave me? Can I lose the baggage?
I wonder what it would be like to just dream and not judge my dreams. What would it be like to allow any thought or feeling to pass through my mind unjudged? What would it be like to let myself feel good even if the dream that’s making me feel good seems in this or that or the other way completely impossible, or unrealistic, or (worse yet!) would seem to impose on someone else if it came true? Because goddess forbid any portion of my existence should impose upon someone, or even be noticed. Lordy! What a tragedy that would be. Ha.
What would it be like to just eat until I’m full, and sleep when I’m tired, and dream whatever dreams are in there waiting to be dreamed?
What would it be like to lose the feeling that I have to eat until I’m uncomfortable, sleep only when I’m completely exhausted, and forget about dreaming because I’ve had my lifetime quotient of dreams come true already?
I’ve been trying the eating and medication/sleeping thing recently, and it’s felt good. For some reason, eating and sleeping according to my body’s natural inclinations makes my daydreams bigger and brighter and happier and more immediate, like they are just over there within arm’s reach or a short drive away and I can see and almost touch them.
So I think the biggest thing for me to lose is the sense that there’s a limit on how much I can dream. I’m well aware that not all dreams come true. I’m all too well aware of this fact. I think I’m probably a person who needs to practice, over and over, the belief that some dreams do come true, so it’s worth dreaming a whole bunch of them – not just to see which ones will come true, but in order to feel really really good in any given moment.
Yeah. I’m gonna lose it. I am. You watch.
