The Opacity of Love

I really should be doing homework.

Really.

But I am not.

I’m just going to sit and type and see what comes up and let it out and let myself take a moment to just process and just keep being sad.

“You’re really sad,” my friend said to me tonight about my break up.

Fifteen days now, but who’s counting?

I am sad.

It seems surreal that it is over and done and there’s been no contact, although there’s been thoughts, let me tell you.

I haven’t though and I won’t.

I keep telling myself if and when I’m supposed to see him is not up to me, it’s up to God.

I had a thought today.

What if I never see him again?

Ever.

I just about lost it.

There was a small murder of crows in the sky over the valley today as I looked out from high in Glen Park at work eating my salad at lunch, and I felt as though there were throwing my heart around out there.

I have taken down all the pictures and deleted all the texts in my phone as well as the phone history.

Man.

We talked a lot.

His number, his name, his face, all through my things.

All through my heart.

In my soul.

In my body.

I went to a workshop over the weekend, just another thing to keep me endlessly busy so that I get through this patch.

I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I’m socked in with the busy to help it pass.

Though I still cry at night when I got to bed.

The slip of golden moon through my back window the other night had me utterly in tears.

I suppose at sometime the tears will stop and I will move forward with some modicum of grace and hopefully with serenity and ease.

I’m not sloppy.

I’m not always losing it.

Only once really badly in the car.

I am not even sure what night that was, maybe Saturday night?

I don’t know.

It was bad and I should have pulled over, but I pulled it together enough to get home.

I felt like if I stopped I’d just be on the side of the road sobbing for hours.

An exaggeration I suppose, but it hurts.

It really does.

Physically too.

My reflux is back with a vengeance.

I remember when my ex told me he thought he might be the reason for my reflux and I waved it off.

Now.

Well, let’s just say that it’s not only plausible I totally believe it.

I suppressed a lot of things to be in the relationship.

I figured he was worth it.

True love was worth it.

In some ways I think it still was and I have no regrets.

But you know, my body was screaming at me that it wasn’t working and I just pushed it aside for a long time.

I’m hoping once the grieving passes the reflux will too and I’ll go back to my normal self.

I also know that reflux is caused by stress.

My food as been really good and I have been under stress.

I’ve been heartbroken, seeing clients, holding space for others, nannying, and doing my PhD coursework.

I’m stressed.

So.

Blogging tonight.

Because that helps

Even if it hurts, whenever I write about it, it hurts, but I figure the more I write the more hurt gets out and the easier it will be to bear until one day I won’t notice it anymore and there is no more to bear.

I’m doing the best I can.

“You have so much love to give,” my friend assured me and that I was sensitive.

I am.

Things hit me hard.

Music moves me.

Love.

Magic.

Living.

I am alive.

I keep reminding myself of that.

I don’t want to hurt myself or use or act out.

I’m not calling up old lovers letting them know I’m on the market.

That just sounds awful right now.

I cannot imagine being with anyone else right now.

But I am not going to stop loving and I’m going to put my sensitive, vulnerable, tender heart back out there.

If anything I have learned that I am lovable and worthy of love in the deepest truest sense of the world.

To have experienced what I did, the passion, the love, the validation and how he saw me, I have that experience to grow from and to cultivate more love with.

I keep writing I forgive myself.

I forgive him.

I love myself.

I love him, I let him go, it wasn’t working, I had to get out, and it still hurts and the fire is extreme and I want to cut off all my hair.

I even talked to my hairdresser about it.

“You can come in and try on short-haired wigs and think about it,” she said, sweet as pie.

I might.

I might not.

I focus on something else.

(I have a lot of hair and it’s nice so if I’m going to cut it off I’m going to make sure it’s the right thing to do)

I think about the tattoo I want.

There’s two that have been haunting my thoughts.

One a tiger dragon graffiti that I took a picture of one night when he and I were walking around China Town headed to a late night dinner.

The other from a card I gave him.

I bought it on my birthday at a little bookshop close to Zuni where I met friends for dinner.

It was a picture of a little girl tugging on the moon and trying to pull it towards her with a rope.

That was us.

Me, the little girl, crying for the moon I could never have.

I could never really have you baby and I have to forgive myself for hoping that one day that wouldn’t be true.

But it never was.

I’m still just a little girl wishing for something she cannot have.

A fairytale.

A fantasy

My sweet fantasy man.

I miss you so much.

So very much.

The moon will wax.

It will wane.

And one day.

Perhaps.

I won’t think of you when I see it.

Perhaps.

 

 

Step Up

Do some service.

Get the fuck out of your head.

Worked like a freaking charm.

I sat and listened to an amazing woman today for hours.

I did a lot of reading.

I did some client work.

I got asked to do a speaking engagement and did that too.

It was fantastic.

To get to be my complete self, lit up, on fire, alive, in love, all the things.

I don’t remember what I said, which is good, that means I wasn’t trying to manipulate how people saw me, I was just sharing.

And my God.

The gratitude.

I smiled so hard.

My face actually got a little sore from smiling so much.

And.

Yes, of course, there were some tears, and love was talked about and I got to reflect on how much love I have been given and how much I still get to give back and out into the world.

It’s amazing.

I was also told this, “you sound like a psychologist!” A sweet man told me after.

That was really nice to hear.

I am grateful for so much in my life.

I have a life, I am alive, that is the start, and you know, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, it bears repeating, if life were fair, I’d be dead.

Life is not fair, I have more than I can have ever imagined or asked for.

I have extraordinary people in my life.

I have people I love and who love me.

I have a full heart.

I don’t do so many of the things that I used to under the guise of it makes me feel better, but really it just made me feel worse, temporary solutions to the pain I was living with.

Like smoking cigarettes, man, I still forget that, I haven’t smoked in twelve years!

No sugar.

No flour.

No booze.

No cocaine.

Sure.

I still use salt, but please, really, don’t take away my last white powder!

I also do things that I always wanted to do but I would just talk about doing them, I didn’t actually do them.

Like.

Oh.

Writing.

I write every motherfucking day.

How amazing is that?

That I consistently give myself the gift of sitting down to paper and pen and getting honest with my heart.

It is no easy task and it always gives so much back to me.

So too, this little blog.

I do love the writing, I love how my fingers fly over the keyboard, I love how the words pour out of my hands, a direct conduit from the love in my heart.

I have a great job.

I have a site to get all my practicum hours so that I can graduate in May.

Jesus.

I get to go to grad school!

How many people actually get to do that?

Granted I was getting hella frustrated with the FAFSA online tools which kept telling me my passwords were wrong and wouldn’t let me access my student account.

I have to file for the 2018 financial year.

I have not applied to school yet, but I have some fairly serious ambitions to do so, to go for the PhD, I’m thinking that I would get in Transpersonal Studies, which is a two-year program at my school.

I have to flesh some things out, when I would apply, what I might want to dissertate on.

“You should totally do it!” My therapist enjoined me.  “You find so much richness for yourself in the academic world.”

I had not thought of it like that.

I had thought of it, like I want a PhD, ego stuff.

Then.

When a professor I highly respected told me that I could be of more service in my community with a PhD I thought, yeah, I should do that.

Then.

Well.

I know this sounds kind of crazy, but it also sort of makes sense to me, it would mean being in school two more years and that would give me two more years to acquire hours at my internship before I have to start paying back on my student loans.

I am not in a paid internship.

I’m not sure that I could swing paying back student loans on top of getting my hours.

Then again.

I just keep saying, it’s God’s money, it will work out.

I do believe that.

But.

When my therapist reframed the continuation of school by reflecting to me how much I have gotten out of school, just personally, how much I have grown, that I am giving myself an opportunity to learn more and grow more.

I really liked thinking of it.

So grateful for my therapist.

We started in on a hard piece for me last week.

It was something that I have been holding for a while and I knew eventually it was going to have to come out and the work would need to be done on it.

I have done a lot of work, but there is still more to do, still places of pain that need to be touched into, places I need to grieve, things lost that I don’t know I’ve really let myself see that I had lost.

I don’t want to wallow in my past.

I don’t.

It doesn’t really serve.

But I do want to integrate those experiences, grieve what needs to be grieved, and let it go.

My therapists face when I was getting into some of it, how she pulled me back, grounded me, settled me back, ran over time with me to make sure I was calibrated and strong enough to leave the office.

I had tears on my face and many crumpled tissues, but I also felt a kind of inner awareness that this is where the real work is going to happen and I can get through it all the way.

I wasn’t collapsed in, I was strong, I was lightened, I lightened the load a tiny bit and left a good bit of it in a tissue in the wastebasket.

I have the strength to get in there, dig it out, and let it the fuck go.

So grateful for that.

I am resilient.

I have inner love and joy and strength and light.

I have been given so much love in the last few years, so much more than I thought I deserved, so much appreciation for who I am and what I do.

I really am loved.

I really am lovable.

I am enough.

I have enough.

And.

I get to give it all away.

Which.

Oh.

Glorious paradox.

Is.

The only way I can keep it.

The only way.

 

Committed Monogamous

Relationships are dangerous.

Oh holy fucking shit.

That’s it.

It only took 44 plus years.

And one scary, traumatizing, controlling partner to ruin me for traditional dating.

Not that I think that traditional dating is the answer.

There is no answer.

There is no right.

There is no wrong.

There is only the feeling of love and I don’t have a particular expectation around how I find that love or let myself have that love.

Oh.

I suppose I have definitely introjected the idea that I need to be married to be a whole person, to be enough, that I am somehow not lovable unless married.

And then.

There is the other, not so conscious thing that has been happening for me for over past eighteen years.

I say eighteen years because that is when I broke up with the one man I was in a significant long-term relationship.

We were together for five years.

We probably shouldn’t have been together for more than five minutes, but I’m not going to judge that young very lost, very sad, very fearful woman.

I didn’t know better and I got sucked in.

I got suckered in by my own naive ideas about what love was and how to be in a relationship.

What the fuck did I know about being in a relationship that had any kind of sustainability at the age of 21?

Especially when I look at where I had been the few years prior to the start of the relationship.

Homeless.

Helping out with my sister and her daughter and her first husband.

Helping out my mom, my dad, anyone who fucking asked because I only had this idea that if people needed me I had some sort of value.

That I might be enough, when I felt, although it was not acknowledged, I couldn’t acknowledge it to myself until I had two, almost three years sober, that I didn’t love myself.

That I had no idea how to do it because the love I had been shown was so deadly that I couldn’t escape it fast enough.

In fantasy, in sci-fi books, in chocolate bars, in music, in school, in the backyard of the house in Windsor, in crushing on “unattainable” boys who weren’t interested in me.

It was safer that way.

I found ways to fill that hole of loss of love.

Food became a big one.

Taking care of other people, that was great, focus on someone else and don’t think about myself, my needs, my wants, my desires.

I mean.

I wasn’t allowed to have needs, wants desires, so why even bother?

I would only be disappointed.

I came into my therapy session today talking about the weather, the turn of seasons into Fall, that I was being proactive, that I had purchased a light box to deal with the SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) that I have a history of experiencing.

I segued into a being proud of myself moment for acknowledging that yes, I could have gone to a 7 a.m. yoga class today, but then I would have been crazy pressured to make my therapy session, I would have gotten a quick fast shower, but no coffee, no breakfast, and just barely slapping some make up on and well, I like my makeup.

Not to mention my morning latte and bowl of oatmeal.

Plus I also knew that I wanted to be available for a phone call and if I went to yoga, I’d get less sleep, not eat, no coffee, and miss a phone call from a very important person.

I woke up this morning and reset my alarm, I knew I wasn’t going to yoga and I knew it was the thing to do.

I had my nice breakfast, I had my nice latte, I put on my makeup.

I do remember thinking to myself, heck, I could wear eyeliner today, but therapy.

I mean.

I do have a tendency to cry.

Then I thought, fuck, life is wonderful, what do I have to cry about?

But.

I trusted my gut.

Yeah, I still wore blue eye shadow, it was tasteful, I swear, but I didn’t give myself the winged black kohl liner look that would have put the vavoom on my makeup.

I restrained myself just in case I might cry.

Guess what?

I cried.

My therapist and I were talking about relationships, marriage, family and then I was talking about my ex.

I was talking about five years of living with an addict who was super controlling, although I had no idea at the time.

I talked about what it was like when I decided to break up with him and what happened.

I talked about how he hit me.

I talked about how he knew that I had been hit as a child and it was my boundary, and how he broke it.

I talked about being scared.

I talked about how he stalked me for two years before I could finally pull the trigger and call the cops.

I didn’t talk about the nightmares, but, ugh, they were awful.

I did talk about the police being called and that there were messages on my machine and how not even after listening to a half of the first one the police were ordering a restraining order on my ex.

We went to court after the initial one was filed.

My ex stood in court and asked for the longest one he could get

He knew himself.

He knew he would keep haunting me if he didn’t ask for the longest restraining order he could get.

It was for two years.

We saw each other about two weeks after it expired.

We had one last 24 hours of trying to make something work that was never meant to work.

I said my goodbye.

I was moving to California.

We spoke one last time when his grandmother died.

I had helped with her when she was becoming to senile to help herself.

I will never forget giving her a bath and her tiny frail little body and how she just sat in the tub and let me bathe her and wash her hair.

He thought I should know.

A lot of emotions came up as I talked to my therapist.

How I didn’t want to tell her about how he spit on me in front of my friends, in the face, because I was leaving him.

I will never forget the shocked look on my best friends husbands face, he was frozen in active disbelief of what was happening.

Another friends’ boyfriend intervened.

We drove back to my house with my ex tailing us like an insane man.

My friend’s husband managed to lose him and we took a circuitous way back to my house and, yes, I literally threw clothes into garbage bags and ran back to my friend’s car.

It was January.

It was cold.

I was heart-broken, lost, and in shock.

“Committed monogamous relationships are dangerous for you,” my therapist said with distinct clarity.

I had expressed that I hadn’t really been in a long-term relationship since I had left my ex.

And then she flipped the frame.

And then she gave me the most beautiful perspective.

She told me how it was something a lot of people did, they replicated the same relationships they grew up.

My father, alcoholic, violent.

My stepfather, misogynist, violent, I always remember the blood on the floor from the broken back window of the kitchen in Windsor when my mother had locked him out and he broke the window with his bare fist and turned the lock, the look of his hand, that image is frozen in my brain, bloodied grasping for the lock and turning it, how we ran out the front door and spent the night at my grandparents.

How we went back the next day.

The years of terror that followed that I wouldn’t let myself see as terrorizing.

Of course committed monogamous relationships are dangerous.

Jesus Fuck did you see what happened to my mom?

Did you see what happened to me the one time I get into a long-term relationship.

Not to mention the three-month crazy man I dated when I was 19 who introduced me to crack cocaine and threatened to kill me in a drug induced delusional state.

But who’s counting.

Then she gave me the gift.

She showed me that I had done the best I could to keep myself safe, that I had rules and bylaws  and ways of keeping myself so busy that I couldn’t date.

I spent the last fifteen years trying to figure it out and she went and did it in a session.

Oh.

Of course.

I did a lot of the work too, and she’s right, I did keep myself protected, but I also acknowledge that after a while it stopped working and I longed for a different experience.

And I’m having one and I’m amazed at my life and I’m ok with the fact that I spent so much time and effort taking care of that small little girl who kept being put in dangerous situations through efforts to maintain a “committed monogamous relationship.”

But.

Well.

I’ve grown up.

And emotional intimacy, though still a frightening area, is not the scary thing that I thought it was, it is sweet and sacred and amazing.

I had to go what I went through and I’m not sorry for it.

I am so grateful for getting out, that’s all, that I got out, that I grew, that I changed, it took years and so much work.

So much work.

But.

Fuck.

Worth it.

So worth all of it.

My therapist went over time with me today, it was the first time ever I had talked about the relationship in therapy and I touched into the terror and fear and pain that I was so busy keeping at bay, she brought me back.

She made sure I was back in the present.

She let me talk about the love in my life, the resources I have, my resiliency and that I wasn’t that person anymore, and that I had done an amazing job at taking care of myself.

She urged self-care and tender compassion for myself today.

I think I did ok.

I showed up at work and I showed up for my clients.

And I bought chocolate persimmons today at the market after I got out of my session.

I love persimmons.

I love myself.

I am lovable and worthy of love.

I am enough.

God damn.

Am I ever.

I fucking did it.

 

Sleep

It does wonders.

I still could have slept another hour or fifteen, or so it felt, when I woke up, but I had gotten nearly 7 hours and that was miraculous after a long slog of a day with little sleep.

I am super grateful that tomorrow is Friday.

And that the mom had gotten mixed up with dates and I don’t have to come in early tomorrow.

I will next week.

But tomorrow.

Fuck.

I might even get eight hours of sleep.

It sounds so sexy it makes me shiver in delicious anticipation.

And just being the end of the week brings me some relief.

I’m almost there.

I still have a rather long day tomorrow, full day of work, client at my internship, but I don’t have a second client in the evening until next Friday, so I’ll be out by 7:30p.m. and able to make a friend’s birthday dinner at Fang on Howard Street.

I am also supposed to go dancing with the posse of ladies afterward at Public Works for Afrolicious.

I’m on the fence about that.

Originally I wasn’t going to be able to do dinner and felt an obligation to make a commitment to my friend and say yes to the dancing.

Now.

Well.

Fuck.

It’s been a long week.

I mean.

It really has.

And I’m still not in the clear.

I don’t have a day off until Sunday.

So.

Yeah.

I’m keeping the door wide open to just doing dinner and saying, love you, but I can’t make the dancing.

And.

I love dancing.

I haven’t really danced since Burning Man and god only knows when before that.

But, yes, I do like to dance.

And the music is sure to be good.

I mean.

Really good.

I’m not committing though, not yet, I just need to see how I feel and not try to be a hero and push too hard.

If I have the energy, I’ll go for it and bounce home by midnight so that I can still get up and go to yoga in the morning on Saturday before I go into my internship.

I do know this much.

I am getting a god damn mani/pedi/waxing on Saturday.

I hate looking sloppy and my nails look like ass.

It’s always an indication to me that I am busy when my manicure looks bad.

It’s a time suck, an enjoyable one, but it takes time and when I have a school weekend, like I did last weekend, I don’t have the time.

Oh.

I tried.

I had a little tiny window Saturday between my last class and my first client, but the salon was full and couldn’t get me in for even just a manicure.

Note to self.

Make an appointment so I can get a spot.

I can’t go another week without doing the nails.

It’s a part of my self-care and it’s something I very much like to do for myself.

It’s a couple of hours of sitting still, flipping through magazines, letting someone pamper me, relaxing, using the massage buttons on the chair.

Yeah.

Definitely making some time to do that.

Then my normal Saturday night get together with my fellows over in the NOPA.

I might go out to dinner that night too, but not certain.

I also have homework to attend to, I do need to do some reading.

I actually got in a couple of articles yesterday evening, despite the fact that I had such a long day, I did a 45 minute stretch and got my CBT reading done so that I can actually know what the fuck is being talked about in my webinar on Sunday and I knocked out an article in my Child and Elderly Abuse class.

Little bits and pieces as I go.

It will get done.

I didn’t have much down time at work this week to address homework, but I have brought a book with me every day, just in case.

I never know what the time will bring, just that it’s important to utilize it when it occurs.

I hope to let myself have a little down time too.

I do what I can.

When I can.

I believe in abundance, my time is expansive.

I also acknowledge that my schedule is fucking full and it’s a lot when I step back and look at it.

But boy.

The time goes by.

And.

It won’t always be like this.

It just won’t.

It’s part of what I have to do right now.

Get the degree, get the degree, get the degree.

Eye on the prize.

Eyes softly on the prize.

I don’t want it to be the sole focus of my life.

I have people in my life who are my life and I can’t just be a soul hiding in a room studying all the time.

Or working all the time.

I need connection.

I need love

I need sunshine.

I need star shine.

I need love.

Oh.

I already said that.

But.

For the sake of telling myself that I am allowed.

I need love.

I can’t just send it out, to my clients, my family, my friends, to my job, without getting some back.

And thank God.

I am getting it back.

I am so grateful for that love.

Beyond words.

I realize that I have strength.

But I cannot be strong in a vacuum.

So.

I will do my best this weekend to let myself balance all my commitments and comings and goings and be nice to myself and maybe, I’ll get some flowers, or something else sweet for myself, be romantic, woo my heart, be gentle.

Heh.

See.

I’m making an opportunity to go shopping.

I see myself here.

Oh.

But.

It’s allowed.

Let me allow myself some sweetness for all the hard work I put in.

It’s allowed.

I am lovable and worthy of love.

And.

Maybe.

Yes.

A new pair of shoes too.

Heh.

 

Homework

What homework?

Fuck me.

I am not ready for it yet, but I know I have to get my good girl study habits into action.

Especially since I ran into one of my professors today at my internship.

At least she could sympathize with me about my “plight.”

Full time work, full-time grad school, practicum 10-15 hours a week.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t expect my paper to not be on time.

I got a message from her about it and also, thank God, a question from one of my fellows in the cohort asking about a test that I had not registered in my brain that um, I have to take tomorrow.

FUCK.

Doesn’t my school know I have a life?

I mean.

Seriously.

Ugh.

And I do have a plan, of course I do and I will get my homework done and I’m not so worried about it.

I always get it done and I am very aware of how efficiently I am able to read and write.

Thank God, again and again and again, for my daily writing practice.

I have two papers to write tomorrow and the test to take for my CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) class.

Plus.

A fuck ton of reading.

I had thought I might get to some of my reading today, but between just some general housekeeping that I really needed to do, laundry and letting myself take it relatively easy this morning, relatively is a relative statement, I did a 80 minute yoga class, took a shower, made breakfast, wrote for thirty minutes, put fresh sheets on the bed, did two loads of laundry, took out trash and recycling, e-mailed clients, paid bills, juggled schedules, I didn’t have quite as much time this morning to attend to reading and I didn’t really want to push it.

I threw my reading in my bag along with lunch and hit up my internship.

Two hours of group supervision and then a couples consult and then I had nothing left in me.

I didn’t want to do homework, I just wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge.

I thought I might have stayed an hour or so at my office and just knock out some reading, but I decided that what I really needed was a little personal down time and I went and got a manicure.

It was perfect.

A phone call with my best friend.

A flip through a trashy magazine.

And some electric blue fingernails.

And well.

Now.

Now I feel ready to tackle the homework.

But.

Not tonight.

Nope.

I am going to continue to let myself enjoy my evening and have a relaxing night.

No homework, no anxiety.

A little care taking of me.

A little slowing down.

I have plenty to do tomorrow.

It’s true.

I’ll go to yoga and do breakfast and write here at the house.

I have a lady coming over at 1pm to do some work and doing of the deal.

Then a coffee date with a friend.

Then the homework.

And I bet I will get my CBT homework done between my breakfast and meeting with my first person at 1 p.m.

I also have to do a little grocery shopping and I will need to do food prep.

I am also banking on having some extra time at work to do the reading that I need to do.

The mom is out-of-town with the baby, I won’t have my normal morning routine with my youngest charge.

Oh.

There will still be plenty to do and in some instances some extra work, but I won’t have active charges until 2:15p.m. every day.

I’ll be at the house and make wicked fast work of whatever household things I need to deal with and then give myself at least an hour if not two of reading.

I’ll get it done.

I always do.

I know how full my life can get and it may seem untenable and challenging and too much, but it won’t be like this always.

And I have winnowed out some things, for instance I was unregistered over the weekend for the ALC ride, my bicycle rep still tried to talk me into doing it, but I gracefully turned it down and that’s one less thing on my plate.

I am going to acknowledge that yes, my calendar is still hella full, but I know time will coalesce and things will happen that allow me to have fun and not take myself or my situation so damn serious.

A client will cancel, I’ll get out of work early, some circumstance will arise and I will have a surprise gift of time.

It always happens.

I’m super grateful for that too.

I’ll get through this year.

I’ll get my Masters degree.

I’ve always wanted one.

I’ll have achieved one more step toward my career goal.

I don’t have to do it all tomorrow.

Or tonight for that matter.

I did enough today.

I am enough.

I am lovable and worthy of love.

I affirm myself.

I am capable and strong and I have such lovely people in my life.

I do.

I do.

I am blessed beyond words.

So very blessed.

 

Oops

I did it again.

And again.

And.

Yes.

Again.

Until I stopped.

It took about twenty minutes and then every once in a while I would do it again.

But.

It got better.

I went to a restorative yoga class tonight.

I did not know anything about restorative yoga, although I have had a friend recommend it to me.

Now I know why.

It took me a minute to get into it and while I was getting myself there I had the intruding thought come into my head about when I was going to do yoga again.

Fuck.

Martines.

Stop it.

I’m doing yoga and planning on when I am going to do yoga again.

My brain is not a good yoga partner.

There’s a part of me that recognizes, despite my resistance, or maybe because of it, to yoga in the first place, that maybe, especially since it’s been recommended to me by the people I do my recovery work with, that maybe it’s good for me.

And as person who enjoys feeling good I can see that I want to feel good more often.

But it’s hard juggling everything and as I walked back in the door to my house I had a sudden shift in perspective.

Hey, how about you give yourself some props.

You went to yoga.

You actually made it in on a day during your school weekend.

This is a first.

I have been doing yoga on and off for about a year now.

I had a three-month hiatus late-summer when I was going through a very rebellious stage of not wanting to do it and I got out of the practice.

But.

I came back to it in November and have been trying to establish a consistent routine.

That being said, I have never managed to get in a yoga class on the weekend that I am in school, it’s too busy, I’m at school for 29 hours over the three-day weekend and most of the time I just want to sleep if I’m not in class.

So, yeah.

Be happy that I went.

It was good.

Different.

Much slower.

I never broke a sweat.

But I did stretch and I did meditate and I did relax.

In fact.

Twice I nearly fell asleep.

It also felt sweet, spacious and generous to myself, to show up to Yoga Beach, my studio right down the block at 46th and Irving, and take an hour and fifteen minutes just for me.

Not for my job or my school or for family, not for anyone else but me.

I just went to the site to pull it up and whilst looking for a nice photo to connect y’all with and I came across one of me in class!

Heh.

Of course I bet I’m the only person who would know that was me.

I recognized my hand.

There is a certain way I often find myself holding my hand which comes from the years I spent training kung fu.

I also recognized my tattoos.

That feels nice, having connected to the studio enough that there’s a shot of me in a class.

I like that I have met some new people and I like that I am finding myself breathing better, better able to regulate my stretching and sleeping better.

When I go.

And I haven’t been going as often as I’d like.

But.

Yeah.

Fucking big props for getting myself there today.

Especially with one hour less of sleep at the end of a long weekend of classes.

And.

I got through the midterm weekend, got all my stuff handed in, showed up, participated and got the next set of actions for what I need to do to mover forward in my internship.

I’ll be meeting with my supervisor after work on Tuesday at 6:30p.m.

I’m going to interview him for a project I’m doing for my Community Mental Health class and get all the paperwork signed and filled out for the practicum.

I am also going to ask him to recommend a supervisor and I may also ask him for personal therapy recommendations.

I thought briefly of going back to my old therapist, but there were some things that she did that didn’t always sit right with me and though I gained a lot from the time I was working with her I feel like I would be better served with a new outlook and experience with a therapist.

Lots of stuff to do.

Monday tomorrow, back to work.

Meeting with some people, three, this week to do the deal, getting to my regular spots and getting re-connected, I always feel a little off as I don’t do the recovery work as much during the school weekend either, a 11 hour day in school is challenging to do and to then add in other things, I have found little success doing that.

I haven’t had a full nights sleep in four days.

And there is so much to do already.

So.

Pausing.

Breathing.

Soft, slow stretching.

Yeah.

I think that’s a win for my personal self-care.

The studio is not going anywhere, I remind myself and though I may not be able to get back until next Saturday, which will be my first day off in two weeks as per regular when I am in school, I am ok with that.

I went today.

All I have is today.

I am perfect how I am.

Flawed.

Imperfect.

Lovable.

And.

Enough.

 

 

 

Hello Monday

Let’s be friends.

Today was not a bad day to start the week.

It was sunny.

Hello.

No rain.

So grateful to ride my scooter to and from work, such a gift.

I heard someone complaining, “yeah, it’s sunny, but it’s freezing.”

Shut the fuck up bitch.

It’s NOT raining.

I will take sunny and cold over rain any damn day.

Grateful the drought is finally over, but I think we are amply replenished and the weather can just give it a rest for a minute.

Plus.

I had a really nice leisurely morning with no homework.

I got it done this past weekend, the reading, so my normal go to reading time I spent on doing some extra personal writing and yes, I cleaned the house before I left for work, clean bathroom, clean kitchen, swept the floors.

It was super nice to come home to.

I came home to some nice roast chicken dinner too.

Very glad I had done the food prep this weekend, it was super easy to come home, peel a couple of carrots to nosh on and heat up my turmeric and garlic brown rice and a roast chicken breast and have a hot, homemade dinner.

I love self-care.

I’ve gotten better and better at it.

From going to the dentist and paying for it all up front.

To paying my rent and utilities early for March.

To going to yoga.

To having extra boxes of my favorite tea in the house.

To lighting up the candles when I get home.

It really helps me to be able to navigate the world with kindness and love when I have first taken care of myself.

And I needed that good self-care today.

Both my charges were home.

I had expected that they would be in school, ski week vacation is over and school is back in.

But.

It was grandma’s last day before flying back home so both of the older kids stayed home to see her off.

We had a very sweet day.

Built a Lego model, colored, watched a Cat in The Hat video, and read a lot of books.

I also cooked lunch and dinner for them.

I love cooking.

It is such a nice thing that it is part of my job.

Tonight for dinner I made sautéed ground chicken with onions and garlic in a rosemary infused bechamel sauce and served it over penne pasta.   I made a side of regular mac and cheese, albeit the fancy kind for the kids, as well as maple and soy glazed Julienne carrots and zucchini.

“Carmen!  You are the best cooker ever!” My little lady charge told me, “it is so yummy!”

She likes to sit with me when I have my lunch and nibble whatever I’m having as well as her own meals.

It’s rather endearing.

“More of the corn,” she told me today with these big saucer blue eyes full of merriment and mischievousness.

I was eating a bowl of homemade chicken soup with brown rice and vegetables.

“I’ll have a carrot now,” she said next, pointing to the one in the bowl she wanted.

I just laughed and spooned it into her mouth.

When I got home tonight after work and doing the deal over at 7th and Irving, I had a very kind text message from the dad too, saying basically how grateful he was to come home from a hard day at work to a really nice dinner.

That too makes my day.

I don’t need to be validated, but damn, it is nice to get it, especially from new employers.

I really am quite happy to be with them and so grateful to be in an environment where I feel like I’m totally being of service and also that I am really appreciated for my skills and the job I do.

Usefulness makes for happiness.

I am happy.

I am happy too that I spent some time before work crunching my numbers and saw quite clearly that despite the unexpected out go of the money for the dental stuff, I will be quite fine this upcoming month.

My costs will be covered and I shouldn’t have any problems with making ends meet.

It helps that I have some cash in savings, so I don’t feel stressed out.

I put 3/4s of my tax return straight into savings.

So even though it feels like I don’t have any money, I in fact, do.

I just don’t want to touch it.

I have one savings account that is for travel and I have one that is the meager beginnings of a prudent reserve.

Plus.

The month of March, five weeks.

So I’ll get a little extra there and although I’m not big on working extra hours past 40, I will one week in March as the dad will be on a business trip and I’m going to help out the family more that week.

I’m not quite sure what that looks like, but I said I would help and I am happy to do so.

A lot of that comes from feeling on top of my school work and my next action steps around my practicum placement and my internship.

I have a workshop that I will be attending the next weekend of school to acquire all the paperwork and take the next steps and then that following week I’ll be going to my supervisor with the paperwork and starting the next phase of the practicum.

So exciting.

There are lots of things happening.

But I don’t feel overwhelmed and I’m not trying to figure anything out.

I just keep showing up day-to-day.

Taking whatever next action is in front of me and letting go of the results.

Because the results are not mine anyway.

They never have been.

I can’t control the outcome of anything.

I can just take some simple actions and love myself for trying.

That’s it.

Pretty damn simple.

It is.

Seriously.

 

Help Me

To see what I need to see.

And let go of what I can.

I have had this on a loop in my head all day.

Help me to see what I need to see and to let go of what I can.

I close my eyes.

I open them.

I see leaves scuffling by along the pavement.

I see a tree, tender and green with new growth against the luminescent blue sky.

A man drives by in a delivery van, smiles and waves.

I feel the sun on my face.

It is warm.

Very simple these things.

I don’t have to exert myself so much.

I don’t have to force things or make things happen.

Things have their own damn schedule and time frame.

God’s timing is perfect.

I did a big inventory over the weekend and it is still resonating with me.

I basically inventoried the institution of being single.

Yeah.

I know.

No biggie.

Hahahahahaha.

I told my person I only had one resentment and that it was about myself, as per usual, I’m thinking about myself.

And when I told her it was because I was single she suggested that I look at the inventory differently, that I inventory the institution of being single.

Ooh.

I like that.

I am resentful at the institution of being single because.

I don’t feel like I’m enough.

I am broken.

I feel jealous of other people.

I am less than.

I am lonely.

I have to do everything by myself.

I feel like people are pitying me.

I feel angry.

I feel entitled.

Yeah.

Nothing to unpack there.

Fuck me.

Affects everything about me.

I can see my selfishness really well in holding onto this, so much so, playing the victim, holding on to self-pity, being less than, loads of moral inferiority.

And the funny thing is that when I realized that when I think people pity me, that means I think people are thinking about me.

So not true.

Oh my God.

I am not just all that and a loaf of bread.

I mean.

I’m a pretty decent, kind, loving, human being, but most people are not going around thinking about me and my dating dilemmas.

I mean.

Holy shit.

Selfish much?

God damn.

And of course I’m seeking self-esteem, and more self-pity, it’s a self-pity party, I mean, didn’t you get the invite?  I’m also definitely seeking control, and to be the director.

“Stop exerting yourself more!” She told me, “You’re still a work in progress, God’s timing is perfect.”

Heaving a big sigh of relief at that one.

The dishonesty part was easy for me to see too, that I control my life, ahahahahah, that’s a joke.

And the fear is awful basic–abandonment, never being in a romantic relationship, dying alone, unlovable.

Then she asked me something that I had never even thought about, “where have you been inconsiderate in regards to this resentment?”

Oh.

I’ve been inconsiderate?

Shit.

I have been inconsiderate.

I had my eyes opened in a big way.

Where have I been inconsiderate?

In denying someone my company, my higher power wants me to be happy.

Damn.

I mean.

I never, ever thought of it that way, that I’m denying someone the pleasure of my company.

Fuck.

So this week I have said yes to a dinner party with classmates and a former teaching assistant.

I have said yes to working on a class project with someone in my cohort.

I have a lunch date with my friend and art patron from Burning Man on Sunday in North Beach.

I have said yes to those people who want my company and who have asked for it.

I have not chased after experiences or people who aren’t interested in me.

I said yes to camping at Run Free Camp for Burning Man because the head of the camp asked me to join them this year.

“Go where the love is,” a friend of mine often reminds me.

Yes.

That.

God, please help me to see what I need to see and to let go of what I can.

Help me to stop trying so hard to try so hard.

I felt lighter today, to tell the truth.

Maybe because the rain lifted and the sun came out.

Maybe I just feel things shifting and I am more and more accepting of who and what I am.

That I am not broken, I don’t need fixing, that everything is working out in my favor, that I have done the work and I don’t have to constantly be grinding.

I mean.

That being said, when time does permit, I do need to keep on homework tip.

I did well today.

I finished all my Community Mental Health Reading and I got a good chunk of Couples Therapy kicked through.  I have finished the Trauma reading too and I have the idea for my Trauma reflection paper sketched out in my head, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so to kick out.

I’ll do it in between doing the deal with a lady and my dentist appointment on Saturday.

Leaving me Saturday evening to have a dinner party with school mates and a weekend where I am not wondering about the drama show, the horror story, the fright that I try to entice myself with, the Carmen show.

“You’re the director, main character, scriptwriter, casting agent, staging crew, lighting, I mean, you are doing it all, just stop exerting yourself so much, stop,” she finished.

I laughed.

I cried.

I let it the fuck go.

Oh.

I may pick up the show again, but for the moment I have stopped trying to revise the script and make it into something other than the awesome reality of my beautiful life.

I am a beautiful creature.

Lovable and worthy of love.

You don’t pity me.

I don’t need to pity me.

God please help me see what you want me to see and to let go of what I can.

Seriously.

I am done.

Over it.

All yours.

Ready to stop being inconsiderate.

So much so.

Deleting Photographs

Listening to jazz.

Specifically Art Tatum.

The scratchy sound of the needle dragging though the vinyl is succulent and the glow in my cozy, sweet home is warm and inviting.

I’m deleting photographs in waves.

I had over 10,700 on my hard drive.

They have all been safely moved to my external drive and I’m now in the process of deleting them off my laptop.

I have to say it’s challenging.

There’s a tiny part of me that wants to not delete them, what if they didn’t transfer?

But they did.

And the photos are taking up way too much space on my laptop.

It’s been running slow, telling me constantly to delete files, disk is full.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hear you, I’m working on it computer.

Thanks to my special help, it takes a village, it does, I was able to secure my pix and now, ha!  Now I can take more.

Well.

Not yet.

But soon.

I’m figuring January.

I’ll be flush enough to get a new camera.

I’m not sitting horribly at the moment, but I did buy a ticket to Wisconsin and a ticket to Paris this past month, just paid rent, just wrote the check from my health insurance and bought my mom her birthday present.

I’ll be sending that off tomorrow.

I love sending presents.

I love the idea of seeing someone’s face when they get something I have gotten for them.

I like to give.

I’m a giver.

Shocking.

I know.

When I have been in financial straits I tend to make things, and truth be told, I’m thinking about doing that this year.

I’m not really in straits, I’m just not as flush as I would like.

I’m doing ok and I’m not going to stress, but I was also thinking that I love cooking and it might be nice to make chicken soup for friends at school.

Last year around this time I went over to a friend’s house and cooked food for him for what probably lasted him weeks if not a month while he was going through a challenging time.

Cream of broccoli soup with cheddar cheese and bacon.

And.

Chili with sirloin and three kinds of beans.

Plus a huge pan of cornbread.

It was right around this time, I do remember, it might have actually have been Halloween, I remember there were trick or treaters going around and I used candied corn and bacon, because I roll like that, in the pan of cornbread I made.

I miss baking.

I don’t miss eating it, though I can get nostalgic for it.

But I do miss baking.

Sometimes I wish I could just get all the stuff and bake up a storm like I used to when I lived in Wisconsin.

Sugar cookies with frosting.

Brazil nut toffee.

Popcorn balls.

Fudge.

With and without nuts, but frankly, it’s so much better with nuts.

I miss making cheesecakes and pies, pumpkin pies and apple pies especially at this time of year.

I miss that feeling that, warm, soft glowing feeling that I got as I puttered around my kitchen, mixing and measuring, baking, and kneading, frosting sugar cookies.

I do.

I always get a bit nostalgic for it when I’m heading into the holidays.

The photographs I have been deleting also reminded me of that.

I’m currently in the middle of the 1,000s of photos I took when I lived in Paris.

And I have to say.

Fuck.

I’m a pretty damn good amateur photographer.

There were some really good shots.

And I loved seeing the Paris around Christmas time photographs.

The lights were so gorgeous.

Definitely different from what you see in the states, but they had an allure.

I was also so broke when I lived there, taking pictures was all I could afford to do.

Although I did splurge during the holidays.

Mostly on postage.

I sent my family and friends postcards and Christmas cards from Paris.

I found a photograph of my table, one of my favorite perches at the neighborhood cafe at that was on the same corner where I lived, Rue de Bellefond, in the 9th, Odette and Aime.

I had a glass of water.

A cafe allonge, which is basically an Americano, or a black coffee–I was already skimping on the milk, the cafe cremes were just too pricey.

My notebook.

My bag of pens.

And tons of cards and postcards and stickers from the librairie that was by Square D’Anvers that I made myself a nuisance at.

I couldn’t really afford the pens and paper there, but I would treat myself once in a while, I would buy a card or if I was feeling extravagant, a Claire Fontaine notebook, I would wander the aisles and look at everything.

I was very polite to the owners and once that got used to me and the fact that I always bought something, even if it was tiny, went along way.

Bonjour Madame.

Bonjour.

And I would wile away the time in the aisles longingly caressing the notebooks and smelling the good paper smell.

I love paper.

I love books.

I love, love, love the way they feel and look and well, Paris was a hard place for that luxury when I was living there.

When I went back last Christmas I gave myself carte blanche to buy whatever I wanted to paper wise.

I actually had a challenging time with it for a little while.

Grow up poor and in scarcity, even when there is none, even when I had fat Euro, for me, in my pocket, Euro that was not needing to go to rent or groceries, or god forbid a cafe creme, I had a hard time spending it.

For a few days I was acting as though I couldn’t part with them.

I actually forced myself the first time to buy a notebook at a papeterie my first day there.

Yes, there are paper stores there.

Exclusively paper and pens and auto collants.

STICKERS.

God I love me some stickers.

Shut up.

I did get past it and I did allow a few splurges.

But truth be told.

I could have let myself have more.

That’s a thing.

Letting myself have more.

Nice coffee.

Nice candles.

Nice hair products.

It’s ok to take care of myself.

I still want to give, I do love gifting, there is just something about it, but I also want to let myself have things.

Whether it is an experience, which is usually where I spend my money–traveling.

Or.

A nice pair of pants.

I deserve to have nice things.

I am lovable and worthy of love.

Lest I forget.

And the best thing about the photographs?

They remind me, gently of how far I have come.

When I moved back from Paris three years ago I was broke.

I mean.

I had ten dollars in my wallet.

I have come a long fucking way.

Let me tell you.

And I’m so grateful for the perspective.

And that I documented my experience.

The photographs have been a joy to relive.

Looking forward to making more.

Having more.

Allowing more into my life.

Happy.

Joyous.

And.

Free.

Yes.

Yes, please.

Yes, always.

Doing The Work

And doing the homework while doing the work.

I did both today.

I did a lot today.

It was a day.

Tomorrow will be a day too.

All the days.

All the work.

Letting out slow, long breath and waiting for the tea pot to boil.

It was a good day at work.

It was a good day to do a lot of work.

I’m done with it for the moment and need a reprieve, which will look an awful lot like watching Project Runway and chilling out with an apple after I finish this blog.

I have done enough.

And.

I remind myself that I am enough.

That I am resilient and strong and I have come through so much to be where I am at and I am grateful that I have been carried to a place where I can see that.

It stops with me.

I thought today, a couple of times.

Then.

I thought.

What if that’s just another way of me trying to protect me?

How about I change instead.

How about I look at the trans-generational traumas in my family on my father’s side and on my mother’s side as the things that have made me the diamond that I am.

“Sometimes God uses a heavy hand to create a beautiful thing,” she told me as I sobbed my way through my first real inventory over a decade ago now.

The pressure it takes to create a diamond from the black morass of sadness I was created.

The crucible that holds me I cannot even begin to list all the ways and hows of it.

The secrets and shame and the wildness and the wrong.

The places I have tried to hide and not be found.

I always was.

I always knew.

I know now and it is a deep sadness, but also a formidable strength.

I sometimes can get tired trying to process it all.

“You had this conversation while you were at work?” He asked me aghast on the phone.

I did.

I had a very deep, but not totally deep, there were layers of things left unsaid and things that I still have questions about, but I got what I needed and I could trace the wellsprings of it farther back than I had first suspected.

High temperatures, high drama, high pressures.

I had some clue, but then I had no clue.

And yet, I knew all along.

In fact.

I had avoided making this particular call as I wasn’t sure I really wanted to open the can of worms.

“Sometimes going to far into a genogram can be hard for a client to deal with,” my advisor said to me as I showed him some of the work I had done.

Um.

Yeah.

And there’s so much more.

It’s like a legacy of pain that just rolls through my family.

It is astounding and deep and yet.

I feel that somehow or other I have gotten out, gotten over to the other side and I am looking at it from a distance.

Yet.

There are these ways that I react to the world and there are these defenses I have that I would like to let go of, to open myself up to more life, to not be fearful that I will be shattered again and need to begin again.

The things that worked for me, the safety defenses, they don’t work so much anymore.

And “it stops with me,” in the way that I have used it is not working.

No partner, no relationship, no children.

Because that way I wouldn’t pass it down.

It would really stop with me.

Ultimately that kind of isolation hurts me too.

It’s a solution and a defense that needs to change.

Grateful for the awareness.

Now to wade through the acceptance part and the forgiveness part and get to the action part.

Not sure exactly what action to take, except that right in front of me and to take the suggestions that others have to give me and to not carry the secret or the shame of it that curdles inward and hurts worse than shining the light on it.

Oh.

There are nooks and crannies I’m not too compelled to go spelunking in, at least not right yet, not right now.

I don’t need to stare at my past, I can just look, take it in, and accept it.

And remind myself that acceptance is not approval.

Fuck no

I fucking hella disapprove of the shit that went down.

I do not, I do not, I do not.

That being said, I can’t change it at all.

Although having a different perspective and hearing about some of the things in my family history definitely cast a different light on things.

So much compassion for the human experience.

And that I’m not dead.

For fucks sake.

Or in some straight jacket or in a gutter with a needle in my arm.

The noise of it all.

The machinery of the monsters that clanks down the hall to stumble upon me hiding in the shadows.

I will not have it.

I will not live underneath that banner of fright.

So.

I heal.

Soft and slow.

Gently I go.

It’s the only way.

Compassion and gentleness for myself and awareness that this does take time, perhaps my whole damn life, and that’s ok too, I shall always be seeking and that, that I do believe, is what will make my life that much fuller and richer and deeper and more experiential.

I am not numb.

Granted I am a little tired.

Granted I would like to make a phone call and say.

Come over, hold me, make it all better.

But there is no one to call that can make it all better.

All better is between me and my God.

And so far.

Well.

Things are going ok.

Really.

They are.

And when they are not, I know where to turn and I know that my feelings are fleeting, they pass, the sadness will be followed by joy or awe or discomfort or all of hundreds of other feeling states.

Feelings are not facts and they won’t kill me.

What I hope is that I can lose a little more of my rigidity and become more flexible while not losing myself or my self care.

Find me in the rooms with art.

Find me with flowers in my hair.

Find me with children strewn across my lap, warm, and a sweet and wearing footie pajamas and listening to me read stories.

Find me with love in my heart.

Find me with my heart on my sleeve.

Find me loving, lovable and worthy of love.

Yes.

Love.

Find me there.

In that field of fallen stars, like fireflies in the grass, at the dusk of this purpled twilight of pain and gray sadness a silent reprieve of pearl light and luminous joy, a flower blooming, a remonstrance of family and a flying laugh, a wallop of joy, a holler of thunder in this church of pain.

The doors flung open.

My heart too big to be contained.

Or.

Restrained.

No more.

My.

Love.

Restrain me no more.