Feeling Better

And almost through the weekend of classes.

The air quality improved substantially today.

So much better.

I have still had a low-grade cough, raw throat and tight and sore sinuses, but the air is better and tonight when I rode my scooter home I could take deep breaths and it felt so, so good.

There are still fires burning, but today felt like hope, that maybe there was an end in sight and that as the day passed things felt better and better.

I don’t know, I can’t predict a thing, but it was something to breathe better today.

The small things that I can take for granted, fresh air, good water, my home, it was with great gratitude that I drew those clean breaths of air, such goodness, just a big simple drawing in of air.

Ah.

I can feel my head ache easing and I know that the air quality has substantially improved.

This morning when I got up it was registering at unhealthy and there was ash again all over my scooter and a distinct smell of wood burning in the air, it was hazy and smudgy and smokey and my first class of the day was boxed up in a hot airless room.

But by the afternoon it started to shift and I left campus to grab lunch with a friend at The Market, the chi chi high-end grocery store in the Twitter building, they have a poke bar that I like to eat at if I’m going to blow a wad of money on lunch rather than eat the food that I brought with me.

I was happy to get out of the school building, the air felt fresher and it just continued to improve throughout the day.

So grateful.

So, so, so grateful.

And I’m also grateful that I only have one more class to get through tomorrow and that will put my squarely at the half way point of the semester.

I will have two more weekends of classes and then the winter break.

I’m doing pretty good, I’ve participated,  caught up on all my reading for this weekend, and I turned in the paper that was due for my Jungian Dream Work class.

I have a mid-term paper due on the 24th of the month for my Transpersonal class that I figure I will write the paper next weekend.

Then two more weekends of classes and I will enter the final semester of my Masters in Counseling Psychology.

Fuck.

I am doing this, I’m doing this, it’s really happening.

It’s been so much work and sacrifice.

I don’t always talk about that, the things that I have had to let go of to participate in the program while still working full-time.

I have given up going to birthday parties, out dancing, movies, fellowship, dates, dinner with friends, people and places and stuff that I used to do on a much regular basis.

It’s been hard.

I have felt sad when I have not been able to connect.

And yet.

I have spent so much time figuring out how to connect with people, with grace, with God, with service, with learning what I need to learn to better serve my community.

And.

Yes.

To have a fucking career where in I can make some money.

Oh.

I know, I’m not going to make a grand amount, but I am going to make so much more than what I make as a nanny, unless I get some super cush job, but the fact is, I’m ready to not be a nanny anymore.

I’ve a few more years and I’m fine with that, I still have miles and miles to go, but sure and steady, slow, one day at a time I am doing the work to get to the place.

And when I get there, well, there will be other places to go.

But.

For right now I am just really happy to be in my last year of the Masters program and to let myself be proud of what I have accomplished.

Showing up every weekend.

Turning in every assignment on time.

Straight A’s.

It’s awful nice to have a 4.0 average in grad school, just let me acknowledge that, I have a 4.0.

That’s something.

I have learned a tremendous amount about myself.

I have made dear friends.

I have a cohort, a group of peers, a community where I wasn’t expecting to have one, I have people who see me and regard me as an equal and who I get great feedback and validation from.

And I’m doing something that I don’t think anyone in my family has done.

I’m getting a Master’s Degree.

I could be wrong about that, I may have a cousin somewhere with one, but I can’t think of any off-hand, I don’t believe most of the people in my family have a college degree, let a lone a Master’s degree.

I feel pretty lucky that I have achieved what I have achieved and that I have put in the work.

Sometimes the sacrifices have seemed really hard, I have been lonely, I have missed experiences, but I also know that I am making myself into a woman with great potential to help and heal and that I will be of service for so many years.

I think I’ll have much more longevity as a therapist than a nanny, I’ll be able to practice as a therapist many, many, many years past the time when I would want to be a nanny anymore.

Hell, I’m pretty done with it as it stands.

Oh, not that I hate my job, I love the family  work for and I am so happy to get to do the work with them.

No, what I meant, is that my body is about done with it, my back is sore from carrying the baby in a carrier, my knees hurt, I have spent so many years being on my feet, from all the years, decades really, working in the service industry–started at 12 ended at 32, so that’s twenty years, and now the past eleven years or so as a nanny.

I could use a sit down job, thank you very much.

I once was having some real problems with my knees and I was young, in my mid twenties, and the doctor told me at that time that I needed to get out of the service industry, that I needed a sit down job, “your knees are that bad,” he told me showing me x-rays and explaining what the problems were.

I didn’t really heed that advice.

And I have managed to get by, sometimes a bit painfully slow, and I have seen things that have slipped past me that I wish I could still do.

No more running.

Not that I was a great runner, but I thought once or twice that I would at least do one marathon in my life

And dancing.

Oh.

Man.

I can tell how bad my knees are when I go out dancing, they are just not what they used to be, not that they used to be great anyway, but fuck.

Anyway.

I will go on standing for a little while yet.

I’m not there yet.

But.

Damn.

I am one more step closer.

I’ll take it.

Yes.

Yes, I will.

One little baby step at a time.

I will get there.

You may be assured.

My Loving Present

You are my holy ideal.

My passion.

My archetype cohered to my heart.

Differentiated.

And.

Separated.

Yet.

Connected to this fire of love.

How I am put together.

Ingrained to my flexible soul.

All that stuff.

All these things.

Opening into space.

Breathing my heart open.

Opening me to more to be more.

I see a table-cloth, red checked.

Flaring out.

A blanket of hope and a lens too.

Complex and beatific.

Oh the awe for you of you about you.

The depth of you.

My value increasing with every breath.

Virtuosity in the cello string.

The thrum of my song of love.

Adoration of crows.

Murder of my ideas of who I am.

Into who I am becoming.

Filtered through this

Harrowing of you.

Exacerbate me.

Explode me.

And.

Reconstitute me.

In your love.

The fall from being.

Into your arms savages me and saves me.

Activating me.

Another layer comes forth.

Another exploration.

Basic trust.

Support.

Strength.

Foundational love.

My own capacity,

Opens.

My heart in my chest.

Exposed to the air,

The fire and heat of you.

I stand strong and still in this knowledge,

In my being.

I let myself bathe in the bliss

Of you.

Your love, flying in the

Face of impossibility.

Which guides me to my expansive

Home.

Embodied and alive.

In the benevolent glory,

The astonishing glow,

Of you.

I’m Not Real Good

With the politics.

I am not real good with the news.

I don’t.

I can’t.

I find myself so overly sensitive and I already am such a raw little nerve, super sensitive to the air and the sky, the wind, the sun, the emotions, the love, the aches, the pains, the joys, the being alive.

All of it.

I stayed off the media today.

I just couldn’t.

It just hurt.

So I took good care of would I could do and that is love.

I showed up for another today and sat and shared and read some stuff and listened.

Then I confirmed meeting a friend in the Castro for coffee and dinner and then another and another and another.

I knew where I needed to be.

Not to express my sadness.

But.

To express my joy.

To be there to support those who have supported me.

Who asked nothing from me except to live happily and joyfully and freely.

To dance and sing and romp and be scathingly fabulous and alive.

I went to sing the song of life and be there to hug and hold hands and be alive with my family.

Some family is your family because of blood.

Some family is family because they rescued me from what I carry in my blood, the shame and rage and hate and ugliness and diseased life that I came from, they rescued me from.

I have had so many stalwart men and women in my life, have a community that extends beyond the boundaries of terror and the scaffoldings of fear.

People who show up and keep loving despite it all.

In spite of it all.

These are my people.

And I am theirs.

I owe them my life, and so much more.

I did what I do best today.

I hugged a lot of people, I kissed a lot of cheeks, I held hands and was just there.

I can’t express the love that I got to be witness to.

And to know that no matter what happens in my life there is always a place to go and a solution to be had for what ever troubles my heart.

For this I am grateful.

Extraordinarily grateful.

I witnessed so much love today and so much life and willingness to keep trudging, to keep doing the deal, to show up for one another.

I am so lucky to know these people.

I am so lucky to be amongst them.

When I can be destroyed by sorrow, terrorized by helplessness, overwhelmed with pain and the grief that I see, the anger, the fear, and then to see the stalwart hearts that muddle through, that keep moving forward despite it all.

How can I not insist on enjoying my life.

Sometimes it feels like a duty, almost an onerous chore.

Then I realized.

How lucky I am to be able bodied.

To be alive.

To have another day to express my love for you.

Love.

Do you know how much I love you?

I hope you do, fiercely, I love you.

Indomitably with great voraciousness.

The smallest interactions, the touch of hands on my arm, my leg, around my shoulders, when I stand here with you, in the sunlight of the spirit and raise my face up to yours to see the tears and also the smiles and the life.

The life.

The resilience.

In the face of horrors and the incomprehensible harm that is done, I can find solace in this kindness that I am so blessed to be a part of.

I was given the gift of life beyond what I should have been.

If life were fair I would be dead.

The fact that I am not is astounding to me.

It is gift that I did not know what to do with when I first received it.

So simply reduced to being thankful.

To be steadfast in gratitude.

To say please and thank you and yes, yes, yes to life, to the gifts that you poured upon my head when it was bowed down in shame.

I am not hear to be rendered helpless in sadness.

No.

I have to go forward, into that bright sun, the brisk wind, to live on the edges of love pushing further in and further outward, the ripples of starlight, the hemispheres of love vertigo in the chambers of my heart, I offer this then to you.

To live.

To create.

To change.

To act.

To not sit with my head buried or my heart obscured.

It might be more painful.

But it is oh so alive.

And that is the duty that has been discharged to me, to live, fully, in love with this reality, no matter how tender it treads upon my soul, I find solace in the knowledge that I have a primary purpose, an understanding that has been passed down, from the experience of one to another, the love of comprehension and the knowledge that this is the only thing I have to do well in life.

The only thing.

The rest falls to the wayside, in the chuff and dander of windblown newspapers peppered with horror and the crestfallen faces of those numbed out to the joy that is present if they could only look up.

I have seen death.

I have born horror in the tissues of my body.

I have been seared with the fire of shame and stilled my own life to swelter in the heat of lusts that were not mine.

I walk through and I refuse to not live this life.

As fully.

As honestly.

Brave and loving as I can.

It may not mean much.

This one small voice.

This one shy heart.

But it is all I have to offer.

And I know that it is no small thing.

To give my heart.

It is no small thing to love.

To be loved.

To reflect it back to the men and women who showered me with it.

It may be the best thing I do.

Love.

I sit here.

In my little chair, at my small kitchen table/desk and send my intentions to you all.

The world of love ends not.

It is here.

It is there.

It is everywhere.

Love.

I swear.

It is there.

Love.

Always.

Just.

There.

 

You Look So Much Better

I mean, wow.

She was the first person to tell me that today.

But not the last.

“Oh, you look like your normal self!”

My friend exclaimed as I got us situated and made a cup of tea.

That could be because I took a shower this morning and I am getting the knack of getting in and out of the shower and using the stool.  It still takes a bit of balancing and maneuvering, and the stool isn’t exactly designed to be sat on, but it works and I showered.

Oh the feeling of a hot shower.

So good.

I also put on cheery clothes today and bright colors and I know that adds to the whole thing, that feeling of being on the upswing.

I am still using the crutches in the morning and the evenings when I have taken off the walking boot, though, the great gold goodness has yet to be retired.

That is now my goal, a more realistic goal than being out of the boot by the time I travel to Wisconsin, next Monday, rather, I will be in the boot, but I won’t have the crutches with me.

I should be able to hobble to and fro a bit without boot and crutch in the evenings when I am there, bathroom trips, etc.

I really cannot fathom having to get on an airplane with the crutches.

I have, however, conceded to use the wheel chair.

It just makes more sense and I will be more comfortable and it’s a courtesy thing, a not charged thing, a way to ease my transition from here to there, my ego can get the hell out-of-the-way, thank you for you thoughts, thank you for sharing, now get out of my way.

I’ll be rolling through SFO next Monday morning.

I will also be bringing all my ace bandages with me and when I do transition out of the walking boot, next Tuesday, I will be extra careful and wrap my ankle as I transition to shoes.

Slow it down.

That seems to be the message, again, and again, and again.

Let my body heal while my mind runs itself on a one way track of, “there’s something wrong, there’s something wrong, there’s something wrong,” ad infinitum.

There’s nothing wrong at all.

I believe that at my basest level, my brain just is that kind of scared, besides, when something’s wrong maybe I will go back to old habits and drink or pick up some drugs, or smoke, or eat some donuts, or I don’t know go crazy and rob a bank.

Or jump off the Golden Gate Bridge before they install the suicide barriers.

That frantic thought of “something’s wrong” keeps me out of the present, out of the gift of the moment, that is so perfect that I cannot handle it, I have to be moving rapidly forward trying to solve all future problems before they even arise so that I know what to do when that day comes.

That day ain’t never coming.

I shared this evening that this whole situation continues to be a gift that I was not expecting, that has allowed me to realize how much I need my community and how easily I can isolate by keeping myself too busy to see what’s happening in my heart.

My heart wants me to slow down.

My heart wants me to breathe and be present.

My heart wants to hear the gulls and the ocean and the robins singing when I sit quietly in the morning with the back door to studio open.

There is such peace there.

My brain wants to know what I plan on wearing to Burning Man.

ARGH.

Brain.

Give it a rest.

You’ll wear the same things you wore last year, like you always do, what ever happens to be in your closet.

My rule of thumb is I only buy something that I will wear here and there.

I haven’t a huge clothing allowance and to just spend money on something that I will only wear two weeks out of the year, is not a wise way for me to spend my clothing dollar.

“I love your polka dots!”

A girl friend said to me this evening.

I am covered, head to toe.

Literally.

Polka dot leggings.

Polka dot sock.

Polka dot shirt.

Polk dot earrings.

Heh.

All stuff I wear at Burning Man.

All stuff I wear here.

But at sometime, and it happens every fucking year, my brain latches on to what will I wear at Burning Man and how to go about collecting said socks, tights, dresses, hats, etc.

Can I just get to Wisconsin before I fixate on that?

Please.

I can fixate on Wisconsin too.

It’s going to be hot and humid.

But really, I don’t see that it’ll be any different from what I wear now.

I may pare it down a bit, the colorful stuff, but then again, I probably won’t.

I am who I am.

And I look more myself than I have in weeks.

Which is a relief.

It means I am getting better.

The ankle is still needing to be elevated more often than not and I am icing it still, but rather than five, six, seven, eight, times a day, it’s becoming twice a day.

Once in the morning when I am sitting and doing my meditation.

Once in the evening after I have finished writing my blog and I am enjoying a little evening snack and having a cup of tea.

There is definite improvement.

I put a little weight on it this morning, just a tiny bit, to test the waters, and knew immediately that today was not the day to push any further.

Don’t wreck the healing that has been happening out of impatience.

Patience.

Kindness.

Tolerance.

Love.

Those are my watch words and my principles.

I can use them to engage with the world.

I can use them to navigate the bad neighborhood in my head.

I get to use them to allow myself the time to continue on the path to recovery.

I am glad that I look better.

But really.

I am glad that I am allowing myself the process of healing more than anything else.

Inside and out.

That’s probably what shows the most anyhow.

I like to think that I reflect my interior state.

Right now it’s all polka dots.

And sunshine.