You know, when I was a kid, and in my late teens, then early 20s, it used to be that all I did was go backwards. I’d think about what I should have done, should have said, and should have known ahead of time to thwart disaster, because EVERYTHING is so dramatic when you are younger, especially when you are a teenager.
Now, because I’m human, I still do that every once in a while. I think back. I question myself. I wonder what might have been different if I'd turned a different way. But, mostly, it makes my insides feel like crap to dwell or go backwards. I've also gotten more tired of my own stories and don't like repeating them as much anymore. I guess you could say that I don't seem to feel as much need as the need I used to feel to rehash me and/or to convince myself (or others) of me and of who I think I am supposed to be or of who I am trying to prove I am.
Maybe I've learned that what is, is, and what's been, was, and isn't anymore. The moment is Now, so there really is no use in going backwards. Is there? It’s like my mom used to say, worrying about something doesn’t change the outcome, so why would regurgitating something change what’s already been? It just doesn’t. There is no use in turning ourselves into human garbage disposals, which is the equivalent of dwelling.
BTW, I'm not a saint. I am not any of those guys or gals, those spiritual teachers, who’ve got it way more figured out than me. I've got bus loads yet to learn about living and being in the Now. It's just that what I've learned so far about being in the Now has started to stick over the years and when some of that good stuff gets in, well, there is less room for the bad stuff, the useless stuff.
It takes practice to get to a point where more of the good sticks. (I practice every day, and a lot of times I still suck at it.) But, even the practice gets easier and eventually your body, regardless of what your mind wants to do, just doesn't have the energy, or want to expend the energy, on anything but what is going on Now or what feels better. And Now just feels better than anything that isn’t anymore or isn’t yet. Shoot, even if Now is a little sticky, give me the goopy crap in my life Now instead of the goopy experiences that already sucked.
Sure, as a writer that's all we do is tell stories. We draw from the past. We ruminate. At times, we brood. We coagulate, consider and conjure up different versions of the truth to convey our side of a web being spun. And, by that necessity, we stray from the luxuries of the Now, from the ‘come what may’ and the ‘be what is’ of the Now, so that the words we put out can live in a new world and become absorbed through the reader’s Now.
That’s okay.
This brings me to my own conclusion, that the telling of a story as a writer, and especially the telling of my own story as a truth as it is happening (and not a truth I launder through a character like the mob washes money to make it new money, different money) is so much different than dwelling, than living in your past as a traveler stuck in your past life unable to grow forward.
It’s so different than living in the stories you carry with you, the stories you re-tell to make sure someone understands the identity of your pain (the nature of your past). Turns out, it's so much more fun to use the expertise the past gives you, and it’s so much less energy expended to use your past’s relevance to support your current story, than it is to live in your past, stuck, longing for yesterday. Just the same, one shouldn’t live in their future, hoping for tomorrow. (Tomorrow never comes.)
Okay, didn't expect that intro, but there it went. Admittedly, a tangent for a writer is such an indulgence, it’s as close to, for me, the equivalent of an addict’s fix.
Anyway, that all said, this time, going backwards, hearing my own story again, stepping to the past to reiterate how I met Watt, it’s not make’n any part of me feel ick. I'm rather like’n thinking anything about him. So, I’ll give you some more of the goods…
I was having one of those days at work, which, unfortunately, has become the pattern at work (work sux. I need a new job!), and I needed to just get away. On that particular Thursday I needed to get far away so I could just breath differently and going to my favorite within-walking-distance spot, which I’ve mentioned before (the one nestled among all the trees that usually cleanses me of the first four hours of my work day) was not going to cut it.
So, I headed for Wholefoods (WF), to their salad bar, to their outside, to their tables and chairs, and to their nowhere near work. While driving there, I thought maybe I’d meet someone. Silly goose, I went on to think, you just want to meet someone so this is not intuition but rather desire. No, but this feels different, my mind argued. No again, it’s just desire, my reason shot back. Ah, well, whatever, my everything-else-that-just-needed-to-get-the-frick-away-from-work stepped up, and then concentrated on the road ahead that would lead me far away from work.
Then I get to Wholefoods, and I’m happy: a little extra hummus here, some of that weird look’n vegan biscuit thing there (that looks fattening and happy making), and some more green lettuce all over, pay over there, and then grab a spot right here. Looks good. Sun is shining. Big sigh. Breathe in. Breathe out. And again. Ahhh.
Then: OH SHIT! Did I just swallow my f’n plastic fork tine? Seriously? Where is it? I cannot find this fork tine in my salad and yet I do not feel anything lodged in my throat. What do I do? Am I going to have to drive to the ER so they can take an X-ray, or do I wait till this damn fork tine rips my esophagus as I swallow more? Or, do I wait till it rips something else on the way out? (Sorry. Gross. I know. But, oddly, I was slightly terrified at the possible ramifications of swallowing a small, sharp, inch-ish long, hard-plastic, mini-dagger shaped object.)
Oh, look. There’s a cute guy with a dog. Well, a leash. Can’t see the dog. (The dog was obscured by the cars in the WF’s parking lot.). Oh, look. There goes that cute guy. I wonder where he is headed. No matter, I’ve potentially got a fork tine making its way to my small intestine just waiting to damage my insides. Bye cute guy with your baseball shirt and cap, long shorts and flip flops. I might have to go to the ER, can't decide, and can’t see where you went anyway.
One more bite of salad. Then another. And another. Should I still be eating? Shouldn't I feel something if I swallowed this fork tine? What the hell! Let me turn the leafs of my lettuce over for like the 90th time. Where is this stupid fork tine if I can't find it in my salad, if I can’t feel it in my throat?
More bites. This sucks. I CANNOT relax.
Finally! There it is, that lame, scary-making, from a cheap-ass fork tine, wedged up against the side of the salad container. Frig'n tine! I hate you. Okay, get rid of the rest of the salad and then go inside the store and get a couple of things, then it’ll be time to go back to hell, err, go back to work.
Wait! There’s that cute guy, standing off to the side. Thought he was gone. Wonder why he’s just standing there way past the WF entrance like that. Oh, the dogs. Got it. He’s waiting for someone. Shoot! He’s got two dogs. Didn’t see that coming. Of course I didn’t, I only saw one leash. HA! You know what? I should go pet those dogs. I need what petting a dog(s) would give me right now. Talking to the cute guy, uh, probably isn’t going to hurt either.
So, his sister is visiting from Colorado? That’s why he ended up here at WF today. Okay, random that he is telling me that he lives 38 minutes away but he’s at this WF because his sister had to go here. She needed her healthy food. Don’t they have a WF where he said he lives? Whatever. Fine by me. He’s here. He’s cute.
Oh, yum. There is sand on his toes. Nice feet. He must have just come from the beach. Oh, dear me, I think his smile almost just knocked me over. Wonder if he’s single. He can’t be single. He doesn’t seem nervous talking to me at all. Single guys always get nervous when you feel nervous, even when they are not into you. Thhey just react to your nerves, to your attraction, so he’s probably not single. But wait, I don’t feel nervous. Is it his dogs calming me? Him?
Ask for my number, you sexy beast. Ask for my number. Come on, come on. Ask for my number! He’s so not asking. Maybe he’s not single. Ah, fug it. It was nice petting his dogs. Time to go.
Then I took about a step and a half away before I was physically stopped, and almost lost my balance mid-step, by my next thought (which physically stopped me): You are a friggen idiot if you don’t ask him if he's single. Just ask. Don't be afraid to let a man know you need him, that’s what the psychic said I need to learn. Who cares if he isn't single. You need to practice not being afraid to put yourself out there. That’s why you go to the psychic on occasion, she’s an energy healer. Who cares about the future? She tells you what your energy blocks are. So, jack ass, STEP UP!
So I asked. "This might sound weird, but are you single?"
That smile of his came first, and he lingered on his own smile before he answered, and he let it spread across his face and rush up to his eyes. I couldn’t see his eyes, because he had sunglasses on, but it didn’t matter. His smile was enough to refresh me like a breeze and let me know that the same energy was in his eyes. Then he said, “Yess. I am.”
Thank goodness. He’s single. Happy dance. HAPPY DANCE.
"Can I give you my number?" I asked. I think that’s when he followed his second yes (yes I could give him my number) with, “I knew this was going to be a good day,” and smiled even broader.
While I was continuing my happy dance inside my head, I told him, "I'm not usually this forward.” That was both a lie and not a lie. I've given my number to plenty of guys in my life without them asking, just not recently. And when I did give my number out in the past, I didn’t give a rat about the guy so there was no threat to me putting it out there. What I rarely do is put myself out there for a guy who might matter. That terrifies me. (Yeah, flying the normal flag again.)
As he followed me back to the table I was sitting at (where I'd left my purse) so I could get one of my cards out, I mumbled something about how odd it was that he was at WF, how odd it was for me (as I never go to WF for lunch during work), and that's when he said, "See? The universe was trying to tell you something."
I'm sorry. What? Did you just say the candy word to my ears, universe?
Love, LOVED, that he'd used the word universe. (Duh!) Oh, and I know I over-use the word duh, but is there a word better than duh when a duh wants to show up? My mind was like, if the word universe is in your regular vocabulary, chances are, we might just get along.
Story done? I didn’t run the errand I’d attached to going to WF for besides getting away from work. I didn't get my Kombucha or my hemp seed. Done, I thought. He was my errand. I can go now.
Since, I have been collecting some of the wonderful things that have been happening on our dates. Since, every part of me that is a girl hopes that I’ll get to enjoy him for a while, for…
Keep being fabulous!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wonderful, wonderful Watt.
On March 25, 2010 I had asked myself: Will I want to remember this date? Given that it is now past the 25th of March, by as many days as it is now that I am posting this post, and I have remembered the date, the answer is yes.
What makes the 25th a memorable day, when, for everyone else, it was just a Thursday? On that Thursday I met beautiful, intense, intelligent and wonderful Watt. The next day, a Friday, Watt and I spent more than a couple of hours on the phone realizing that we have many things in common, one of them being a love for metaphysics and the keen desire to live by, as much as we can, what we learn.
Yes, Watt would seem to be an unusual name for someone, male or female (and, to settle it, Watt is male), but, no, as you may have surmised, Watt is not his actual name. Watt is, however, the blog name we're going with for this man who I am now dating; a man who, among other things brilliant, has a smile brighter than a thousand watt bulb.
Oh, dear Gawd, yes, his smile has such an effect on me that I do, cliché as it is, find myself pulling from a string of over-used words (thousand watt smile) to describe the reaction I experience when Watt's smile is directed at me. (And, yes, yes I did go there to assist me in giving him a blog name which falls outside my standard 2-3 adjectives as a name format.) Even at the slightest turning up of the corners of his mouth I need to catch my breath, and then I need to exhale the wonderful force of everything in me that rises up to meet him.
(I'm not kidding, somewhere there is a metaphysical cheerleader in some corner, pushing up pom poms and jumping up and down while pushing out, "Go! Yay! Their energies connect! GooooOOO UNIverse!)
It might just be me who is affected thus by this smile of his, and by what is swirling within and around him that I can see and feel. I get that. But while my experiences in life do lead me to believe that I might be more sensitive than most to the energy (energies) within others (only by just a wee bit), if it is only me affected so, I am accordingly convinced that any other person who is not at least touched, in some way, by this man's presence (manifested through his smile) is probably blind and/or has been the unfortunate victim of an overall deadening of all sensory perception. (Sucks for them. Sounds like a bad horror movie.)
They’d probably the same people who I don’t have much of an effect on, being the intense presence I am (that’s not bragging, just reality), and, well, yeah…they’re probably dead inside. Moving on. (Sometimes we all might have better luck interacting with a wall than people like that, those dead-sense-flat-liner people.)
Truly, in my opinion, Watt’s heart and his soul move through his mouth in the way that a healer's energy moves through their hands. He has other epicenters—other ways in which what is within him comes out (we all have many), but I’m going to be stuck on his lips, his smile, the smile in his eyes, for a while, thank you.
Oh, and, yum (Yowie-yum!), it should be added that as a woman, there are facts about him not lost on me. A lot more of me shakes, quivers even, because of him. (Although, I hate that I am using the word quiver; this word that used to be good but has since been reduced and relegated to the world of romance novels.) What I am trying to tell you is that Watt is friggen handsome as hell with his dimples, his strong jaw, his gorgeous light greenish-gray/blue eyes (I can't decide the color, they change), traits which put their special stamp on the over six feet of him. It should be noted, though, that it wasn't until after we'd gone out a few times that I realized how good looking he is.
That my sound weird, but for me, at first and still, everything beautiful about him pours as easily forth from his smile, and from his being, as gravity lets flowing water rapidly fall from a cliff. I've never met anyone whose mouth is such a perfect mirror of the story behind their eyes. His mouth and eyes so effortlessly manifest his insides, and what comes from within him, it is what first attracted me to him.
The rest of the girl in me, who was like, "Holy shit! You're handsome," had to catch up to my intense attraction to his core. That is probably why every time I kiss those luscious, begging-to-be-enjoyed lips of his, my being continues to rise up to meet him, then jumps up at attention a second time when everything animal and base and human and normal in me thinks: Bonus! You're hot.
Not everything is coming out of him, though. He holds stuff back, of course. I can feel that, too. We’ve only just started dating, and he’s a man, so…duh. There is a lot that men don’t say. Even a man like Watt, who is evolved beyond his gender and his age, keeps things close. (Besides, let's just say it. I am not a feminist, but rather a realist, and many men never evolve at all. So there’s that we have to accept.)
I can even sense each moment he diligently leaves details out, although I can't say that he always knows he’s doing it, and, I can’t intuit why these details go missing, as I never sense they are a big deal or anything I should worry about or never feel they are anything that I would feel threatened by. Part of me feels he’s protecting himself. Another part of me thinks he thinks he’s protecting me. He may think certain details won’t settle right with me. But, there again, I am not bothered, whatever it is. This information is his to keep until he chooses whether or not to share more with me. I only mention it because I've felt it.
Fortunately, what he mostly holds back seems to be his human shit. And I say shit because the human part of us that is scared and has an ego, and that lets (cause we can't always help it) fear delegate some of our actions, well that part, it is shit. It’s the same shit in me. It’s what I hold back. It’s my fears. It’s the same shit we are all trying to get over and work past so we can get to the real us and get to the more enlightened connections with each other.
So I can’t hold that against him or against myself.
Although, if and when he lets out some of what he’s holding back, exposing more of his humanity, the vulnerability of his human stuff will start to get mixed in with the part of his being that pushes its way out so beautifully (beyond his human stuff) I’m going to be in for an even more amazing ride. I’ll feel honored (as we all should feel honored when people let us see their humanity. It's one of the highest trusts and best compliments). It will allow me to compliment and honor him with more of me.
What I think it is... No, I know, he and I, we’re in that early phase. We are at that place where two people look at each other and think: Holy cow! This is pretty awesome (whatever this is) that you and I met. You’re bitchen. I’m bitchen. This rocks.
Then, the more we feel ourselves attracted to the other person, and the more our vertical hearts start to invest in this person, regardless of what chatter the mind has to offer in an effort to attempt to slow down and sabotage the heart’s investment (Note: Our linear minds are never rational), so begins that whole: no-no-no, you-go-first ride.
Together you reach the point when you both know that someone has to be vulnerable first. Someone has to take a chance, not just to support and further the connection you’ve made together, but to also support one’s own personal journey which is enriched by the experience of this other person.
Who is going to go first with Watt and me? Good question. I think we’ll pace each other and we’ll be like a short sling-shot, taking turns pulling back and catapulting further, inevitably bringing the other along. It probably won't take long. Likely a lot of this sling-shotted dance will be abetted by wine (which is how it’s gone so far and how it goes with most folks). Right now, we’re both past getting our feet wet, and I think we can both feel ourselves wanting to dive in (there’s too much energy between us not to jump in and see where it goes) but neither of us has gotten in past their waist yet.
Okay, so...the goods? How'd this start? Where’d we meet? Where is this going?
The truth? I don't know where this is inevitably going. My intuition has presented some possibilities, all good (as all roads to enlightenment are inevitably good) but I'm keeping those possibilities to myself right now and have no desire to blog about that. I know an open mind, and open heart, and an open being, which will all keep me here Now, is what is most important. So, we'll see.
What I will say right now is that it's been a long time since I've been in the company of a man who makes me feel like I am the girl. I’m enjoying allowing this man let me dare to be something other than the girl who can take care of herself and who projects (willingly or not) that I’m independent/I don’t need you. Turns out, I am a girl. I want the guy to call. I want to see him. I want like a girl wants.
It’s scary, though, letting.
Oh, hell yes it’s scary. Everything human in me is revolting. (Man, normal sucks some times. Samn it!) Thus, I am being challenged by the universe (directly) and by him (not directly, but through what I know to be the gift of him), to let myself… And if you need to be reminded, I’m not a girl who lets. Yes, I let energy. Yes, I let experience. But no, I don't always "let" where men or new people are concerned.
This not because I am judgmental. Quite the opposite. You've probably learned by now that I am less judgmental than most. It is because of my sensitivity to energy.
Contrary to how open I appear to be to most, and I am open in many respects, I actually have a hard time letting people in if I can't immediately feel from them that there is potential value in the exchange that I will have with them. What I mean is: if I meet an asshole and know and/or feel a person is an asshole, most times I don't see the value of letting an asshole into my life. I've had dealings with assholes already, and I've realized that the most important thing to be learned from an encounter with an asshole is to just stay as far away from the asshole as possible. Rarely does any good come from an exchange with an asshole.
Assholes are, fortunately, the exception to what usually comes one’s way, but the point is more clearly made by using the asshole as an example of a detectable energy and the possible experience that will be gotten from this energy. Transversely, there are others, people, I've encountered where I may not know if the friendship will last, if the love will endure, or if the circumstances will be on my side, but I do know, more often than not (right from the beginning), that, regardless of the outcome, what I will receive and what I will give to this person (what will be exchanged) will be of value to both of us. Lessons will be learned. Growth will happen.
I know that not all lessons are easily come by. Sometimes it is through the dents and the scrapes we get that offer us our most valuable lessons. I've been there. Sometimes it is through the love we receive and the dressing of our wounds, on our own or aided by others, that we learn other things that are invaluable. I've been there, too.
To that end, the value of any encounter with Watt was almost immediately as evident as the very nose on my face. I didn't know whether what was to come between us would be a big exchange (lengthy: months to years) or a small one (weeks to months), or even whether because of this new connection with him I would end up licking new wounds or healing old ones (or both). But I knew, instantaneously and inherently, the worth of knowing him. (BTW, since meeting him I'm a feel'n like I will be healing some old wounds and if we both remain open enough to recognizing the blessing of our connection, we’ll both get to enjoy even more from each other for a longer while.)
Unfortunately, my sensing (intense sensing) that Watt is a part of my path, someone that I was supposed to connect with, does not let the letting through any easier. Well, it does a little, but not as much as I'd like. I’m getting better at working with the tools my energy is borrowing to learn and evolve: this human body, this hindering mind. But I’m still stumbling around in the dark here most times like every other temporary earthbound form. (Ah, shit, I just felt the most un-signed-up of the metaphysical trekers check out after that remark. Well, good luck to you in your journeys.)
Anyway, I (almost) can't remember when last I wanted to crawl inside someone so much because I was so mentally and physically attracted to them. It’s intoxicating, being with Watt. So wherever this is going, I like where it is right now. I like where I am now with it.
I've met a man I want to spend time with. I've met someone I want to get to know while I get to know myself even more. I want to be with him in The Now, whatever that comes to mean in each moment.
In one moment that meant him telling me that he thought I was amazing and hot. He flashed his grin, drew in a deep breath, looked around my apartment (at all my paintings), then back at me, and said it again as he exhaled, “I think you are amazing.” (He wasn’t just talking about my paintings, so you can imagine how that filled me.)
I just loved it! To be seen, and by him? Hello? What girl doesn’t want to hear that she’s amazing, that’s she’s beautiful, and that the guy in her life thinks she’s hot. He could tell me a thousand times any of these things and more. I’d never get sick of hearing them from him. He’d just be bringing me into him more than he already has.
Plus, and this is odd, while I think I’m cute, pretty enough to some, better or worse to others (it's all objective in the end) few men in my life have said out loud to me that they think I am some variation of pretty, cute, or beautiful, or whatever a man tells a woman he’s with about how she looks to him, so Watt has been one of the few men who have verbalized it. I liked it. I want to keep liking it.
I know. You’re probably still stuck on that. Stuck on how it is that very few men in my life have complemented my looks. It is especially weird when you consider, whether I’m hot or not, that telling a chick she’s pretty, or some variation, is the go-to for most men while trying to get laid. Sure, plenty of men have tried to sleep with me, but that’s never been their primary tactic, the you-are-so-beautiful thing. I can’t even think of some of the tactics used on me right now, but complementing my looks mostly ain’t been it.
Shoot, just a couple of weeks ago I went out with Chad and Heather on one of the nights Watt had to cancel our plans, and some joker tried to put the moves on me then. Vaguely I remember him telling me that he didn’t care if I’d just started dating someone, and thought I shouldn’t care either, but I can honestly say I don’t remember him making a reference to my looks to up his game. Well, he did make some comment about the way I was dressed, about me being old school, because I was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and flip flops, but never anything about me being pretty. Plus, all gangster types think someone without tattoos and mutliple piercings are old school so he may as well have just said, “Where’s your flare, bitch?”
One time Chloe and I discussed this, that men rarely compliment my looks, and she told me she thought it was like the smart girl thing, or the fat kid thing, where people won’t or don’t state the obvious. But Chloe is a knockout, ridiculously gorgeous (we’ve covered this) and she still hears as much quite often. Again, every friend of mine who has ever met Chloe has commented on how pretty she is. Every time we are out men tell me they think she's gorgeous.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s the energy I put out, that since I place so much value on what is on the inside that’s what people can probably sense from me and they don’t pay any tribute to the human girl on the outside who is still just a girl and who isn’t going to mind, not one bit, hearing that she’s pretty. (I’ll never know what it is, exactly. Or, maybe one day it will make sense. Everything does eventually. Right?)
Anyway, as much as I always laugh and smile (it's just easier and an easier way of life than being pissed off), a lot of my recent smiling has been dedicated to Watt, thinking of things he's said or ways he's looked at me. That's a good thing. It's always better when a man is making you smile than disappointing you.
Oh, and if that point seems obvious to some, I know it’s not to others. There are still those of us out there, girls, who gauge how much they like a guy by how upset he makes her. Some women think feeling pain is what it is supposed to feel like. It’s not. Me? If I start to notice myself being continually let down or feeling disappointed by a man, I know something ain’t right. I listen to that. (I’ve said it before: The man worth your tears will not make you cry.)
In what has been such a short amount of time with Watt, has been time spent where the hours on end (in each of the nights we’ve shared) feel so light they've stacked themselves like minutes turning into seconds, then seconds bursting at the seams to be the next Now, and it feels great.
Next I may write about how it started and where and how we met. I am not sure.
But for now I just want to add, again with the biggest grin on my face, that for our first date he showed up with, instead of flowers, an Alan Watts CD. Just as fun, is that he has my favorite flowers, sunflowers, planted in his backyard and diligently chose to bring the CD instead of the flowers, even though he already knew my favorite flowers. (Good sigh... LUV that!)
Really. It's brilliant. Not just the bringing of the Alan Watts CD (which, I am just now realizing as I write this, becomes a sort of a double entendre for my smile guy’s blog name, Watt,which I did not intend), but the gift itself, the CD. Watt is a man on a quest for the truth and Alan Watts, the late philosopher and spiritual teacher, has been just one step in his journey. Watt, my watt (my smile guy) wanted to share the other man’s teachings, Alan Watts, with me. Oh how that delights me.
What a sexy, metaphysical beast I find my smile guy to be! I already love him for that!
Oh, don't get freaked out by my use of the word love. I do love him. There would be no reason for me not to feel pure love towards him. I am loving him in the way I would hope we would all love, purely and easily. Love is who we are before we are anything else, and if someone allows you to feel yourself, if you can see them for who they are, and they can see you, why wouldn’t that be the radiant love we’re supposed to feel?
So… for Now, yum. For now, love. For Now, I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out. For Now, I feel grateful for this new person/energy in my life and feel even more blessed for what this connection may offer me that is yet to come.
Keep being fabulous!
What makes the 25th a memorable day, when, for everyone else, it was just a Thursday? On that Thursday I met beautiful, intense, intelligent and wonderful Watt. The next day, a Friday, Watt and I spent more than a couple of hours on the phone realizing that we have many things in common, one of them being a love for metaphysics and the keen desire to live by, as much as we can, what we learn.
Yes, Watt would seem to be an unusual name for someone, male or female (and, to settle it, Watt is male), but, no, as you may have surmised, Watt is not his actual name. Watt is, however, the blog name we're going with for this man who I am now dating; a man who, among other things brilliant, has a smile brighter than a thousand watt bulb.
Oh, dear Gawd, yes, his smile has such an effect on me that I do, cliché as it is, find myself pulling from a string of over-used words (thousand watt smile) to describe the reaction I experience when Watt's smile is directed at me. (And, yes, yes I did go there to assist me in giving him a blog name which falls outside my standard 2-3 adjectives as a name format.) Even at the slightest turning up of the corners of his mouth I need to catch my breath, and then I need to exhale the wonderful force of everything in me that rises up to meet him.
(I'm not kidding, somewhere there is a metaphysical cheerleader in some corner, pushing up pom poms and jumping up and down while pushing out, "Go! Yay! Their energies connect! GooooOOO UNIverse!)
It might just be me who is affected thus by this smile of his, and by what is swirling within and around him that I can see and feel. I get that. But while my experiences in life do lead me to believe that I might be more sensitive than most to the energy (energies) within others (only by just a wee bit), if it is only me affected so, I am accordingly convinced that any other person who is not at least touched, in some way, by this man's presence (manifested through his smile) is probably blind and/or has been the unfortunate victim of an overall deadening of all sensory perception. (Sucks for them. Sounds like a bad horror movie.)
They’d probably the same people who I don’t have much of an effect on, being the intense presence I am (that’s not bragging, just reality), and, well, yeah…they’re probably dead inside. Moving on. (Sometimes we all might have better luck interacting with a wall than people like that, those dead-sense-flat-liner people.)
Truly, in my opinion, Watt’s heart and his soul move through his mouth in the way that a healer's energy moves through their hands. He has other epicenters—other ways in which what is within him comes out (we all have many), but I’m going to be stuck on his lips, his smile, the smile in his eyes, for a while, thank you.
Oh, and, yum (Yowie-yum!), it should be added that as a woman, there are facts about him not lost on me. A lot more of me shakes, quivers even, because of him. (Although, I hate that I am using the word quiver; this word that used to be good but has since been reduced and relegated to the world of romance novels.) What I am trying to tell you is that Watt is friggen handsome as hell with his dimples, his strong jaw, his gorgeous light greenish-gray/blue eyes (I can't decide the color, they change), traits which put their special stamp on the over six feet of him. It should be noted, though, that it wasn't until after we'd gone out a few times that I realized how good looking he is.
That my sound weird, but for me, at first and still, everything beautiful about him pours as easily forth from his smile, and from his being, as gravity lets flowing water rapidly fall from a cliff. I've never met anyone whose mouth is such a perfect mirror of the story behind their eyes. His mouth and eyes so effortlessly manifest his insides, and what comes from within him, it is what first attracted me to him.
The rest of the girl in me, who was like, "Holy shit! You're handsome," had to catch up to my intense attraction to his core. That is probably why every time I kiss those luscious, begging-to-be-enjoyed lips of his, my being continues to rise up to meet him, then jumps up at attention a second time when everything animal and base and human and normal in me thinks: Bonus! You're hot.
Not everything is coming out of him, though. He holds stuff back, of course. I can feel that, too. We’ve only just started dating, and he’s a man, so…duh. There is a lot that men don’t say. Even a man like Watt, who is evolved beyond his gender and his age, keeps things close. (Besides, let's just say it. I am not a feminist, but rather a realist, and many men never evolve at all. So there’s that we have to accept.)
I can even sense each moment he diligently leaves details out, although I can't say that he always knows he’s doing it, and, I can’t intuit why these details go missing, as I never sense they are a big deal or anything I should worry about or never feel they are anything that I would feel threatened by. Part of me feels he’s protecting himself. Another part of me thinks he thinks he’s protecting me. He may think certain details won’t settle right with me. But, there again, I am not bothered, whatever it is. This information is his to keep until he chooses whether or not to share more with me. I only mention it because I've felt it.
Fortunately, what he mostly holds back seems to be his human shit. And I say shit because the human part of us that is scared and has an ego, and that lets (cause we can't always help it) fear delegate some of our actions, well that part, it is shit. It’s the same shit in me. It’s what I hold back. It’s my fears. It’s the same shit we are all trying to get over and work past so we can get to the real us and get to the more enlightened connections with each other.
So I can’t hold that against him or against myself.
Although, if and when he lets out some of what he’s holding back, exposing more of his humanity, the vulnerability of his human stuff will start to get mixed in with the part of his being that pushes its way out so beautifully (beyond his human stuff) I’m going to be in for an even more amazing ride. I’ll feel honored (as we all should feel honored when people let us see their humanity. It's one of the highest trusts and best compliments). It will allow me to compliment and honor him with more of me.
What I think it is... No, I know, he and I, we’re in that early phase. We are at that place where two people look at each other and think: Holy cow! This is pretty awesome (whatever this is) that you and I met. You’re bitchen. I’m bitchen. This rocks.
Then, the more we feel ourselves attracted to the other person, and the more our vertical hearts start to invest in this person, regardless of what chatter the mind has to offer in an effort to attempt to slow down and sabotage the heart’s investment (Note: Our linear minds are never rational), so begins that whole: no-no-no, you-go-first ride.
Together you reach the point when you both know that someone has to be vulnerable first. Someone has to take a chance, not just to support and further the connection you’ve made together, but to also support one’s own personal journey which is enriched by the experience of this other person.
Who is going to go first with Watt and me? Good question. I think we’ll pace each other and we’ll be like a short sling-shot, taking turns pulling back and catapulting further, inevitably bringing the other along. It probably won't take long. Likely a lot of this sling-shotted dance will be abetted by wine (which is how it’s gone so far and how it goes with most folks). Right now, we’re both past getting our feet wet, and I think we can both feel ourselves wanting to dive in (there’s too much energy between us not to jump in and see where it goes) but neither of us has gotten in past their waist yet.
Okay, so...the goods? How'd this start? Where’d we meet? Where is this going?
The truth? I don't know where this is inevitably going. My intuition has presented some possibilities, all good (as all roads to enlightenment are inevitably good) but I'm keeping those possibilities to myself right now and have no desire to blog about that. I know an open mind, and open heart, and an open being, which will all keep me here Now, is what is most important. So, we'll see.
What I will say right now is that it's been a long time since I've been in the company of a man who makes me feel like I am the girl. I’m enjoying allowing this man let me dare to be something other than the girl who can take care of herself and who projects (willingly or not) that I’m independent/I don’t need you. Turns out, I am a girl. I want the guy to call. I want to see him. I want like a girl wants.
It’s scary, though, letting.
Oh, hell yes it’s scary. Everything human in me is revolting. (Man, normal sucks some times. Samn it!) Thus, I am being challenged by the universe (directly) and by him (not directly, but through what I know to be the gift of him), to let myself… And if you need to be reminded, I’m not a girl who lets. Yes, I let energy. Yes, I let experience. But no, I don't always "let" where men or new people are concerned.
This not because I am judgmental. Quite the opposite. You've probably learned by now that I am less judgmental than most. It is because of my sensitivity to energy.
Contrary to how open I appear to be to most, and I am open in many respects, I actually have a hard time letting people in if I can't immediately feel from them that there is potential value in the exchange that I will have with them. What I mean is: if I meet an asshole and know and/or feel a person is an asshole, most times I don't see the value of letting an asshole into my life. I've had dealings with assholes already, and I've realized that the most important thing to be learned from an encounter with an asshole is to just stay as far away from the asshole as possible. Rarely does any good come from an exchange with an asshole.
Assholes are, fortunately, the exception to what usually comes one’s way, but the point is more clearly made by using the asshole as an example of a detectable energy and the possible experience that will be gotten from this energy. Transversely, there are others, people, I've encountered where I may not know if the friendship will last, if the love will endure, or if the circumstances will be on my side, but I do know, more often than not (right from the beginning), that, regardless of the outcome, what I will receive and what I will give to this person (what will be exchanged) will be of value to both of us. Lessons will be learned. Growth will happen.
I know that not all lessons are easily come by. Sometimes it is through the dents and the scrapes we get that offer us our most valuable lessons. I've been there. Sometimes it is through the love we receive and the dressing of our wounds, on our own or aided by others, that we learn other things that are invaluable. I've been there, too.
To that end, the value of any encounter with Watt was almost immediately as evident as the very nose on my face. I didn't know whether what was to come between us would be a big exchange (lengthy: months to years) or a small one (weeks to months), or even whether because of this new connection with him I would end up licking new wounds or healing old ones (or both). But I knew, instantaneously and inherently, the worth of knowing him. (BTW, since meeting him I'm a feel'n like I will be healing some old wounds and if we both remain open enough to recognizing the blessing of our connection, we’ll both get to enjoy even more from each other for a longer while.)
Unfortunately, my sensing (intense sensing) that Watt is a part of my path, someone that I was supposed to connect with, does not let the letting through any easier. Well, it does a little, but not as much as I'd like. I’m getting better at working with the tools my energy is borrowing to learn and evolve: this human body, this hindering mind. But I’m still stumbling around in the dark here most times like every other temporary earthbound form. (Ah, shit, I just felt the most un-signed-up of the metaphysical trekers check out after that remark. Well, good luck to you in your journeys.)
Anyway, I (almost) can't remember when last I wanted to crawl inside someone so much because I was so mentally and physically attracted to them. It’s intoxicating, being with Watt. So wherever this is going, I like where it is right now. I like where I am now with it.
I've met a man I want to spend time with. I've met someone I want to get to know while I get to know myself even more. I want to be with him in The Now, whatever that comes to mean in each moment.
In one moment that meant him telling me that he thought I was amazing and hot. He flashed his grin, drew in a deep breath, looked around my apartment (at all my paintings), then back at me, and said it again as he exhaled, “I think you are amazing.” (He wasn’t just talking about my paintings, so you can imagine how that filled me.)
I just loved it! To be seen, and by him? Hello? What girl doesn’t want to hear that she’s amazing, that’s she’s beautiful, and that the guy in her life thinks she’s hot. He could tell me a thousand times any of these things and more. I’d never get sick of hearing them from him. He’d just be bringing me into him more than he already has.
Plus, and this is odd, while I think I’m cute, pretty enough to some, better or worse to others (it's all objective in the end) few men in my life have said out loud to me that they think I am some variation of pretty, cute, or beautiful, or whatever a man tells a woman he’s with about how she looks to him, so Watt has been one of the few men who have verbalized it. I liked it. I want to keep liking it.
I know. You’re probably still stuck on that. Stuck on how it is that very few men in my life have complemented my looks. It is especially weird when you consider, whether I’m hot or not, that telling a chick she’s pretty, or some variation, is the go-to for most men while trying to get laid. Sure, plenty of men have tried to sleep with me, but that’s never been their primary tactic, the you-are-so-beautiful thing. I can’t even think of some of the tactics used on me right now, but complementing my looks mostly ain’t been it.
Shoot, just a couple of weeks ago I went out with Chad and Heather on one of the nights Watt had to cancel our plans, and some joker tried to put the moves on me then. Vaguely I remember him telling me that he didn’t care if I’d just started dating someone, and thought I shouldn’t care either, but I can honestly say I don’t remember him making a reference to my looks to up his game. Well, he did make some comment about the way I was dressed, about me being old school, because I was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and flip flops, but never anything about me being pretty. Plus, all gangster types think someone without tattoos and mutliple piercings are old school so he may as well have just said, “Where’s your flare, bitch?”
One time Chloe and I discussed this, that men rarely compliment my looks, and she told me she thought it was like the smart girl thing, or the fat kid thing, where people won’t or don’t state the obvious. But Chloe is a knockout, ridiculously gorgeous (we’ve covered this) and she still hears as much quite often. Again, every friend of mine who has ever met Chloe has commented on how pretty she is. Every time we are out men tell me they think she's gorgeous.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s the energy I put out, that since I place so much value on what is on the inside that’s what people can probably sense from me and they don’t pay any tribute to the human girl on the outside who is still just a girl and who isn’t going to mind, not one bit, hearing that she’s pretty. (I’ll never know what it is, exactly. Or, maybe one day it will make sense. Everything does eventually. Right?)
Anyway, as much as I always laugh and smile (it's just easier and an easier way of life than being pissed off), a lot of my recent smiling has been dedicated to Watt, thinking of things he's said or ways he's looked at me. That's a good thing. It's always better when a man is making you smile than disappointing you.
Oh, and if that point seems obvious to some, I know it’s not to others. There are still those of us out there, girls, who gauge how much they like a guy by how upset he makes her. Some women think feeling pain is what it is supposed to feel like. It’s not. Me? If I start to notice myself being continually let down or feeling disappointed by a man, I know something ain’t right. I listen to that. (I’ve said it before: The man worth your tears will not make you cry.)
In what has been such a short amount of time with Watt, has been time spent where the hours on end (in each of the nights we’ve shared) feel so light they've stacked themselves like minutes turning into seconds, then seconds bursting at the seams to be the next Now, and it feels great.
Next I may write about how it started and where and how we met. I am not sure.
But for now I just want to add, again with the biggest grin on my face, that for our first date he showed up with, instead of flowers, an Alan Watts CD. Just as fun, is that he has my favorite flowers, sunflowers, planted in his backyard and diligently chose to bring the CD instead of the flowers, even though he already knew my favorite flowers. (Good sigh... LUV that!)
Really. It's brilliant. Not just the bringing of the Alan Watts CD (which, I am just now realizing as I write this, becomes a sort of a double entendre for my smile guy’s blog name, Watt,which I did not intend), but the gift itself, the CD. Watt is a man on a quest for the truth and Alan Watts, the late philosopher and spiritual teacher, has been just one step in his journey. Watt, my watt (my smile guy) wanted to share the other man’s teachings, Alan Watts, with me. Oh how that delights me.
What a sexy, metaphysical beast I find my smile guy to be! I already love him for that!
Oh, don't get freaked out by my use of the word love. I do love him. There would be no reason for me not to feel pure love towards him. I am loving him in the way I would hope we would all love, purely and easily. Love is who we are before we are anything else, and if someone allows you to feel yourself, if you can see them for who they are, and they can see you, why wouldn’t that be the radiant love we’re supposed to feel?
So… for Now, yum. For now, love. For Now, I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out. For Now, I feel grateful for this new person/energy in my life and feel even more blessed for what this connection may offer me that is yet to come.
Keep being fabulous!
Friday, April 9, 2010
Just, love...
So I am watching this movie, and while the movie matters (which movie it is, what the movie is about)…no it doesn’t. The movie doesn’t matter. Not really.
I watch a ton of movies and it could be a frig’n murder mystery or a movie about the practices of embalming in Egyptian society (I know, random. That’s the point.) When it’s time for me to feel something, to figure out how and what something means, why it means, how it’s hitting me, I’ll find one line in a movie, one thing, in a conversation, in a work day, within a run-in with a stranger, whatever, and whamo, I’m struck. I’ve got what I need from a moment to come to a realization.
And this is where I am, what I’ve realized, because of the movie, inspite of the movie, before the movie, lately, again, it doesn’t matter, the realization is here… This is what 40 years has taught me:
Don’t fear. Love. Be in love, be love, fall in love, love someone, love yourself, let love, give love, need love, borrow love (when you forget where yours is), or steal love (love’s moments, loves treasures, and love’s bounty), if you have to, if that’s the only way you can love, but just love.
Just, by all means, by every means, and without fear, love.
Don’t fear.
Fear stops.
Love gives.
Fear inhibits. Love lets.
Just love. Even in your smallest moments, let…
Love...
Keep being fabulous. Keep loving.
I watch a ton of movies and it could be a frig’n murder mystery or a movie about the practices of embalming in Egyptian society (I know, random. That’s the point.) When it’s time for me to feel something, to figure out how and what something means, why it means, how it’s hitting me, I’ll find one line in a movie, one thing, in a conversation, in a work day, within a run-in with a stranger, whatever, and whamo, I’m struck. I’ve got what I need from a moment to come to a realization.
And this is where I am, what I’ve realized, because of the movie, inspite of the movie, before the movie, lately, again, it doesn’t matter, the realization is here… This is what 40 years has taught me:
Don’t fear. Love. Be in love, be love, fall in love, love someone, love yourself, let love, give love, need love, borrow love (when you forget where yours is), or steal love (love’s moments, loves treasures, and love’s bounty), if you have to, if that’s the only way you can love, but just love.
Just, by all means, by every means, and without fear, love.
Don’t fear.
Fear stops.
Love gives.
Fear inhibits. Love lets.
Just love. Even in your smallest moments, let…
Love...
Keep being fabulous. Keep loving.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
My Heart Is Good
Well, I finally had the cardio stress test. Thank goodness everything is okay. The test itself was so not like what I expected it to be, like what you see in the movies. You always see (well, I’ve always seen) a person just a run’n and run’n away on a treadmill, for like hours (several minutes, at best) and they’re a sweat’n buckets, and they are all exasperated and near out of breath, but I didn’t have to run for that long. I only ran for maybe 2-3 minutes (shoot, it was probably less) and I never broke a sweat.
Now that I think about it, maybe I came up with my idea of what a cardio stress test was going to be like from watching “The Incredible Hulk” when I was a kid. I think I thought you had to go green, or something like it, like Dr. Bruce Banner did, in order to figure out if your heart was truly stressed.
The fact is, most of the cardio stress test consisted of the nurse using the ultrasound machine to get a look at (a picture of) my heart. As benign as that sounds, getting an ultrasound of one’s heart…turns out, for me, not so much.
It started out with the nurse spreading a dab of jelly-ish goo onto various areas of my chest (different dabs within about a 4” radius from the center of my chest) to get a base reading (take initial pictures). The nurse instructed me to lay this way or lay that way (mostly sideways), then just a little more this way, and so on. Then the nurse pressed her ultrasound doo-hicky thing (the whatsa-dooz-it that takes the images) against my chest, wanding it up and down, then sideways, basically everywhere she'd put the jelly goo. That was fine. Benign. Total cinch.
Then the doctor came in. We exchanged hellos. He asked me all his cardio-stress-test doctory type questions. I answered. Then up on the treadmill I went. Everything is still fine. After my non-sweat-breaking saunter was complete, I laid back down on the table where the doctor, himself, could now push the ultrasound wand around on my chest for a minute or two. Still fine. Then, the doctor was gone. He probably left the room because he knew what was coming.
The ‘not fine’ was next. Next came the 5-8 minute interval where, while trying to get at a particular angle (image) of my heart, the nurse pressed down, really hard, on the skin at the base of my left breast. Okay, it was my boob. She was pressing into the base of my boob as though the boob wasn’t there. (Yeah, yeah, I’m not stacked, but I’ve still got boobs…) She just kept pushing in, and re-adjusting, trying to get the image she wanted, and it hurt. Like hell.
Maybe I just have sensitive boobers, but I kept unconsciously pulling away from the pain. Finally, after my body recoiled from her, for about the seventh time, that was when I consciously realized what I was doing (preserving my left breast from total annihilation) and I looked at this nurse chick (who I thought before was perfectly nice but was now was now questioning her tactics), and I asked, “Um? Does this usually hurt most women? I mean, do they feel such pain at the base of their breast?” And then, in case she wasn’t completely clear on what I was trying to convey: Hello!? You’re smashing the crap out of my bump, chick!, I said, Because that really hurts.”
“Some women, yes,” she answered me, casually, as though it was old hat for her. Just another day at the office making mashed potatoes out the bottom of an unsuspecting boober. Then she explained, “We need to press hard because we’re trying to get the image of your heart beyond your rib.”
Oh? I thought. Is that what that immovable hard thing is that you are pushing my boob into? That would explain it. Still, couldn’t you have warned me that that you were going to pin my innocent tater against my rib in a cage match? I would have braced myself, woman-ed up, knowing that my rib was going to win. Then I thought, man, if this is any indication of how a mammogram is going to feel, I am not going to like that either. The mamo-machine is going to win that one, too.
Ah, well, I’m relieved just the same. Left boob pain or not. At least now I know if I don’t get to knock it out the way I want to, I can go for a run and alternatively relieve some stress. So, with a clean bill of health I came straight home and I did some sit-ups.
No, I didn’t. Came straight home and ate a piece of greasy-ass pepperoni pizza and didn't pick all the pepperoni slices off this time. It was just one piece, and the pizza had been in my freezer for a while. (I've been working my way through, one piece at a time, this whole frozen pizza for the last 8-weeks. I still left behind half of the pizza.) What I am essentially trying to say is that for the first time in four months, I, being completely sober, not buzzed or hung-over, deliberately ate something bad.
Why eat bad? Because I was elated by the news that my heart is fine, but I was pissed off at the other news I got and decided to feed the pain away. You know, I was emotional eating. I wanted to eat my way to happiness, and/or eat my way away from pissed-off-ness.
It didn't work. I got nauseous as hell from all the grease, cheese, and meat on the pizza. Turns out, for me, apparently I have to be tipsy and/or hung-over in order not to notice how the comfort/mood food is affecting me. Sadly, while I would never advocate bad eating, that scenario provides strong evidence that there is one benefit to eating crappy more often, that is rather than only eating like crap on the rare occasions when one is drink'n it up or suffering from the drunk-it down. It’s like training, the more you eat badly the more practice your body has for dealing with the mood food. It knows you are going to put it through it, so it gets its gloves on.
It should be noted that I am one of the healthiest eaters I know. I'm not bragging. I'm complaining.
Remember? I'm the girl with the crappy genetics. Given that my ass and arteries seem to have the same reaction to my food choices, I really don't have the luxury of not eating good. So, I don’t diet. It's a lifestyle.
I've been eating as healthy as possible, adopting rabbit like habits (more and more and more), since I was about 13 years old. Indeed, when one realizes that the ol' family genes have given many of their family members heart disease and high blood pressure as well as bountiful guts, double chins, and plentiful thighs, oh my, one tends to go to the greens and to the fruit, and to supplement with the low fat/fish proteins. Yes, my genetics, and the scary running-the-stairs-at-the-beach episode where my heart got all pressure-ie and I became so nauseous I wasn’t sure I could drive myself home, would be the reason for the precautionary measure—the cardio stress test. I’ve been running, flat ground and stairs, on and off since I was in the 2nd grade. What happened that day at the beach had never happened before and, frankly, it freaked me out.
And, on I go… Where the genetics are concerned, I don't, as they say, gain five pounds just by looking at a slice of pepperoni pizza, with every bite I am facing diabetes, higher blood pressure, and, possibly, a heart attack. Both my parents had heart attacks in their early 50s.
In case you are wondering, in my heaven all the things that taste divine aren't going to be so evil for my body. F’n earth stinks that way. I just want to eat, man.
So when the doctor says, “Your heart looks good. No scar tissue, but I am concerned about your cholesterol.” And then goes on to inform me that my bad cholesterol number is now higher than it was a year ago, that sucks!
Really? Higher? Worse than a year ago when I was already eating good? Sure, I was still eating low fat meat/fish and low fat dairy regularly, but I was eating good. To deal with this news then, the too-high cholesterol, I’d already made the switch to go mostly vegan, almost raw. (Gawd, I miss cheese!) And now the cardiologist is telling me that my bad cholesterol is even higher than before?
Man, can my genetics just go get stuffed and go for a swim with a pair of cement shoes on? Sure, sure, he also said what the last doctor said, that my good cholesterol number is great. Yeah, Yeah, I’m an over achiever. Great. Thanks.
But come on. What else am I supposed to do for my bad cholesterol? I’m starting every day with a 250 calorie mixed-berry, almond milk, and cinnamon smoothie. I’m having an apple or a banana an hour later right before a salad for lunch. A salad, I might add, that is comprised of red-pepper and papaya dressing, shredded carrots, celery, garbanzo beans (and or black beans, or white beans, or whatever beans), and a dash of tahini sauce. Then, oh kill me, I have another banana and a small handful of almonds as a snack an hour or so before I have my last meal of the day. A meal usually made up of a bus load of veggies, sometimes some whole wheat pasta, and I add a non-animal protein, like seeds, or nuts. (I already read that as long as you get all the calories you need with fruits and veggies that your body synthesis the amount of protein you require.)
I’m automating, eating good. I am doing it right by the standards of all the health books and all the nutritional requirement needs I’ve read and researched. Sigh. So what up, man?!!!
But, again, let’s focus on the good. I now have the doctor’s approval to exercise again. I may not be on the do-it team yet, but at least now I know doing it won’t kill me. (Ha! I never thought that!)
Oh, and we’re now counting what I hope to be 45 days to normal. Having started back on the BC, I am hoping my hormones get back into line. Just 30 days to go. Of course I could be going through early menopause and that’s the reason I am so emotionally weird-ed out lately, and thus there’s no hope for me. But that’d be okay. Then I’d have an excuse to be more interesting: menopause hormones. (Yes, that’s how I am putting it, these little mood swings. They’re making me interesting.)
So...my heart is big and I now know it’s strong, too, for now. This is a very good thing.
Keep being fabulous.
Now that I think about it, maybe I came up with my idea of what a cardio stress test was going to be like from watching “The Incredible Hulk” when I was a kid. I think I thought you had to go green, or something like it, like Dr. Bruce Banner did, in order to figure out if your heart was truly stressed.
The fact is, most of the cardio stress test consisted of the nurse using the ultrasound machine to get a look at (a picture of) my heart. As benign as that sounds, getting an ultrasound of one’s heart…turns out, for me, not so much.
It started out with the nurse spreading a dab of jelly-ish goo onto various areas of my chest (different dabs within about a 4” radius from the center of my chest) to get a base reading (take initial pictures). The nurse instructed me to lay this way or lay that way (mostly sideways), then just a little more this way, and so on. Then the nurse pressed her ultrasound doo-hicky thing (the whatsa-dooz-it that takes the images) against my chest, wanding it up and down, then sideways, basically everywhere she'd put the jelly goo. That was fine. Benign. Total cinch.
Then the doctor came in. We exchanged hellos. He asked me all his cardio-stress-test doctory type questions. I answered. Then up on the treadmill I went. Everything is still fine. After my non-sweat-breaking saunter was complete, I laid back down on the table where the doctor, himself, could now push the ultrasound wand around on my chest for a minute or two. Still fine. Then, the doctor was gone. He probably left the room because he knew what was coming.
The ‘not fine’ was next. Next came the 5-8 minute interval where, while trying to get at a particular angle (image) of my heart, the nurse pressed down, really hard, on the skin at the base of my left breast. Okay, it was my boob. She was pressing into the base of my boob as though the boob wasn’t there. (Yeah, yeah, I’m not stacked, but I’ve still got boobs…) She just kept pushing in, and re-adjusting, trying to get the image she wanted, and it hurt. Like hell.
Maybe I just have sensitive boobers, but I kept unconsciously pulling away from the pain. Finally, after my body recoiled from her, for about the seventh time, that was when I consciously realized what I was doing (preserving my left breast from total annihilation) and I looked at this nurse chick (who I thought before was perfectly nice but was now was now questioning her tactics), and I asked, “Um? Does this usually hurt most women? I mean, do they feel such pain at the base of their breast?” And then, in case she wasn’t completely clear on what I was trying to convey: Hello!? You’re smashing the crap out of my bump, chick!, I said, Because that really hurts.”
“Some women, yes,” she answered me, casually, as though it was old hat for her. Just another day at the office making mashed potatoes out the bottom of an unsuspecting boober. Then she explained, “We need to press hard because we’re trying to get the image of your heart beyond your rib.”
Oh? I thought. Is that what that immovable hard thing is that you are pushing my boob into? That would explain it. Still, couldn’t you have warned me that that you were going to pin my innocent tater against my rib in a cage match? I would have braced myself, woman-ed up, knowing that my rib was going to win. Then I thought, man, if this is any indication of how a mammogram is going to feel, I am not going to like that either. The mamo-machine is going to win that one, too.
Ah, well, I’m relieved just the same. Left boob pain or not. At least now I know if I don’t get to knock it out the way I want to, I can go for a run and alternatively relieve some stress. So, with a clean bill of health I came straight home and I did some sit-ups.
No, I didn’t. Came straight home and ate a piece of greasy-ass pepperoni pizza and didn't pick all the pepperoni slices off this time. It was just one piece, and the pizza had been in my freezer for a while. (I've been working my way through, one piece at a time, this whole frozen pizza for the last 8-weeks. I still left behind half of the pizza.) What I am essentially trying to say is that for the first time in four months, I, being completely sober, not buzzed or hung-over, deliberately ate something bad.
Why eat bad? Because I was elated by the news that my heart is fine, but I was pissed off at the other news I got and decided to feed the pain away. You know, I was emotional eating. I wanted to eat my way to happiness, and/or eat my way away from pissed-off-ness.
It didn't work. I got nauseous as hell from all the grease, cheese, and meat on the pizza. Turns out, for me, apparently I have to be tipsy and/or hung-over in order not to notice how the comfort/mood food is affecting me. Sadly, while I would never advocate bad eating, that scenario provides strong evidence that there is one benefit to eating crappy more often, that is rather than only eating like crap on the rare occasions when one is drink'n it up or suffering from the drunk-it down. It’s like training, the more you eat badly the more practice your body has for dealing with the mood food. It knows you are going to put it through it, so it gets its gloves on.
It should be noted that I am one of the healthiest eaters I know. I'm not bragging. I'm complaining.
Remember? I'm the girl with the crappy genetics. Given that my ass and arteries seem to have the same reaction to my food choices, I really don't have the luxury of not eating good. So, I don’t diet. It's a lifestyle.
I've been eating as healthy as possible, adopting rabbit like habits (more and more and more), since I was about 13 years old. Indeed, when one realizes that the ol' family genes have given many of their family members heart disease and high blood pressure as well as bountiful guts, double chins, and plentiful thighs, oh my, one tends to go to the greens and to the fruit, and to supplement with the low fat/fish proteins. Yes, my genetics, and the scary running-the-stairs-at-the-beach episode where my heart got all pressure-ie and I became so nauseous I wasn’t sure I could drive myself home, would be the reason for the precautionary measure—the cardio stress test. I’ve been running, flat ground and stairs, on and off since I was in the 2nd grade. What happened that day at the beach had never happened before and, frankly, it freaked me out.
And, on I go… Where the genetics are concerned, I don't, as they say, gain five pounds just by looking at a slice of pepperoni pizza, with every bite I am facing diabetes, higher blood pressure, and, possibly, a heart attack. Both my parents had heart attacks in their early 50s.
In case you are wondering, in my heaven all the things that taste divine aren't going to be so evil for my body. F’n earth stinks that way. I just want to eat, man.
So when the doctor says, “Your heart looks good. No scar tissue, but I am concerned about your cholesterol.” And then goes on to inform me that my bad cholesterol number is now higher than it was a year ago, that sucks!
Really? Higher? Worse than a year ago when I was already eating good? Sure, I was still eating low fat meat/fish and low fat dairy regularly, but I was eating good. To deal with this news then, the too-high cholesterol, I’d already made the switch to go mostly vegan, almost raw. (Gawd, I miss cheese!) And now the cardiologist is telling me that my bad cholesterol is even higher than before?
Man, can my genetics just go get stuffed and go for a swim with a pair of cement shoes on? Sure, sure, he also said what the last doctor said, that my good cholesterol number is great. Yeah, Yeah, I’m an over achiever. Great. Thanks.
But come on. What else am I supposed to do for my bad cholesterol? I’m starting every day with a 250 calorie mixed-berry, almond milk, and cinnamon smoothie. I’m having an apple or a banana an hour later right before a salad for lunch. A salad, I might add, that is comprised of red-pepper and papaya dressing, shredded carrots, celery, garbanzo beans (and or black beans, or white beans, or whatever beans), and a dash of tahini sauce. Then, oh kill me, I have another banana and a small handful of almonds as a snack an hour or so before I have my last meal of the day. A meal usually made up of a bus load of veggies, sometimes some whole wheat pasta, and I add a non-animal protein, like seeds, or nuts. (I already read that as long as you get all the calories you need with fruits and veggies that your body synthesis the amount of protein you require.)
I’m automating, eating good. I am doing it right by the standards of all the health books and all the nutritional requirement needs I’ve read and researched. Sigh. So what up, man?!!!
But, again, let’s focus on the good. I now have the doctor’s approval to exercise again. I may not be on the do-it team yet, but at least now I know doing it won’t kill me. (Ha! I never thought that!)
Oh, and we’re now counting what I hope to be 45 days to normal. Having started back on the BC, I am hoping my hormones get back into line. Just 30 days to go. Of course I could be going through early menopause and that’s the reason I am so emotionally weird-ed out lately, and thus there’s no hope for me. But that’d be okay. Then I’d have an excuse to be more interesting: menopause hormones. (Yes, that’s how I am putting it, these little mood swings. They’re making me interesting.)
So...my heart is big and I now know it’s strong, too, for now. This is a very good thing.
Keep being fabulous.
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