Yeah, it's like 5 minutes later, and I am not smarter yet, but this I know...
This post will not be profound. I don't have the happy of flower power sprouting out of my ass yet. And, Spring is not upon me. At all. (So much not, I feel like a napkin at a BBQ resteraunt, all used up and a over worn.)
Yet, a day away from New Year's eve, I've had a revelation. Velveeta and reality TV are my rocky road. I know the brain cannot process fatty food and intense emotion at the same time...but this concept has had a whole new meaning in the passing months.
I want to marry velveeta and bury myself in trashy reality TV!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
No, really. Surrender.
I guess that's the message life is giving me. I really am going to have to surrender. But how and to what, exactly? For me, it's all getting a little out of whack and I'm not sure how to make sense of it.
Bull#2 writes a review and checks one of the commendable boxes, and uses words like efficient, clear, and concise. Then slips in some personal digs, calls me zealous in my efforts (trust me, it was meant negative), and remarks about my time away from the office.
I really shouldn't have scheduled a training session in advance of a meeting Bull#2 wanted to invite me to and I shouldn't have taken the approved vacation time this holiday season that would be taking place whilst another meeting Bull#2 wanted me in attendance for would also be taking place. Oh, and in the last 7 months, there was one or two sick days I called in for, and there were those 2 pre-approved days off for doctors appointments. Man I have, obviously, been abusing my vacation and sick time. What was I thinking?
I also shouldn't have asked one of my former professors to write a letter of recommendation for me for grad school. He'll do it, he said, but he warned me that my art just isn't good enough at this time and that I should expect to have to apply a couple of times and paint some more focussed work before I am actually accepted.
Another wonderful boost to my ego came when one of my close friends, who happens to be going through a lot of tough stuff, unleashed on me. I apparently do and say a lot of annoying things. I'd go into all of the annoying things I've been doing for the last 8+ years, that have been grating on this friend's nerves but weren't worth mentioning until now, but I'm not sure it is necessary.
I'm either that annoying, or not. Either way, I have to accept that this friend needed a place to put all the hurt, anger, frustration, betrayal, abandonment, etc., they are feeling from the events in their life, and, tag, I was the place and my personality was the target.
What sucks the most?
Well, I can take that my boss is an idiot and in sections of my review took out on me many of the boss's own short commings. I can also accept that I may need to look at myself professionally, even if I've never gotten a negative review in my entire life before (even for jobs I hated more).
I can take that I may not be a good enough artist for grad school at this point. That's fine. Getting my BFA in art taught me to have a thick skin as a creative.
And, I can take that one of my good friends either finds me wildly annoying, or moderatly annoying, depending upon where the anger was coming from, and that I may have some personal things worth looking at.
But what I can't take is that I don't quite know what to do with all of this now. It's all a bit much at one time. I am left wondering, how do I surrender to so much negative energy and turn it into useful productive steps? Maybe there are people out there who could essentially be told "You're not good enough," personally, professionally, and creatively, and come out feeling spry, but I feel like life just kick the crap out of me.
Wow! The last half of this year really has been a fabulous learning experience. (Wait?! WTF am I supposed to be learning again? Oh, yeah...Surrender.)
Bull#2 writes a review and checks one of the commendable boxes, and uses words like efficient, clear, and concise. Then slips in some personal digs, calls me zealous in my efforts (trust me, it was meant negative), and remarks about my time away from the office.
I really shouldn't have scheduled a training session in advance of a meeting Bull#2 wanted to invite me to and I shouldn't have taken the approved vacation time this holiday season that would be taking place whilst another meeting Bull#2 wanted me in attendance for would also be taking place. Oh, and in the last 7 months, there was one or two sick days I called in for, and there were those 2 pre-approved days off for doctors appointments. Man I have, obviously, been abusing my vacation and sick time. What was I thinking?
I also shouldn't have asked one of my former professors to write a letter of recommendation for me for grad school. He'll do it, he said, but he warned me that my art just isn't good enough at this time and that I should expect to have to apply a couple of times and paint some more focussed work before I am actually accepted.
Another wonderful boost to my ego came when one of my close friends, who happens to be going through a lot of tough stuff, unleashed on me. I apparently do and say a lot of annoying things. I'd go into all of the annoying things I've been doing for the last 8+ years, that have been grating on this friend's nerves but weren't worth mentioning until now, but I'm not sure it is necessary.
I'm either that annoying, or not. Either way, I have to accept that this friend needed a place to put all the hurt, anger, frustration, betrayal, abandonment, etc., they are feeling from the events in their life, and, tag, I was the place and my personality was the target.
What sucks the most?
Well, I can take that my boss is an idiot and in sections of my review took out on me many of the boss's own short commings. I can also accept that I may need to look at myself professionally, even if I've never gotten a negative review in my entire life before (even for jobs I hated more).
I can take that I may not be a good enough artist for grad school at this point. That's fine. Getting my BFA in art taught me to have a thick skin as a creative.
And, I can take that one of my good friends either finds me wildly annoying, or moderatly annoying, depending upon where the anger was coming from, and that I may have some personal things worth looking at.
But what I can't take is that I don't quite know what to do with all of this now. It's all a bit much at one time. I am left wondering, how do I surrender to so much negative energy and turn it into useful productive steps? Maybe there are people out there who could essentially be told "You're not good enough," personally, professionally, and creatively, and come out feeling spry, but I feel like life just kick the crap out of me.
Wow! The last half of this year really has been a fabulous learning experience. (Wait?! WTF am I supposed to be learning again? Oh, yeah...Surrender.)
Saturday, December 18, 2010
You can't make this stuff up
Ah, COME ON! I know I’ve been joking that this place is so dark it’s like a cave, but I’m not a friggen super hero, I don’t want to hang out with bats. Am I kidding? I wish.
Here I go and give myself a break from my new place hunt that I’ve been on for the last 2 months straight, like a second job, and only drove the neighborhoods for an hour and a half today, leaving myself the rest of the afternoon to spend with Cella, doing lunch and a movie, and upon returning home I end up less than five feet from a bat in a floundering flight.
Not cool.
“Nuh, uh,” you say. “How can it be?” you ask.
Fine. Than what was it? Just as I was turning key to knob, a black, blob of a featherless flying object was flipping its stunted flaps against the overhang of the condo porch, in what appeared to be a disorientated redirection of aim, at 8:30 pm in the evening. (Little reminder, the expression “blind as a bat” has it merits.)
Just in case there was a chance I mistook a bird for a bat, because perhaps birds do fly at night and bats don’t exist at the beach where I live, I Googled it. One article down from my basic search, dated 2010-04-07, I found a siting in my area. “Rabid bat enters home; Health department issues warning.”
Perfect. If I die from a panic attack a pack of rapid bats can eat my decaying flesh instead of wild wolves. I can’t think of a more poetic disposal of my corpse. Nice. (BTW... Do bats come in packs?)
Here I go and give myself a break from my new place hunt that I’ve been on for the last 2 months straight, like a second job, and only drove the neighborhoods for an hour and a half today, leaving myself the rest of the afternoon to spend with Cella, doing lunch and a movie, and upon returning home I end up less than five feet from a bat in a floundering flight.
Not cool.
“Nuh, uh,” you say. “How can it be?” you ask.
Fine. Than what was it? Just as I was turning key to knob, a black, blob of a featherless flying object was flipping its stunted flaps against the overhang of the condo porch, in what appeared to be a disorientated redirection of aim, at 8:30 pm in the evening. (Little reminder, the expression “blind as a bat” has it merits.)
Just in case there was a chance I mistook a bird for a bat, because perhaps birds do fly at night and bats don’t exist at the beach where I live, I Googled it. One article down from my basic search, dated 2010-04-07, I found a siting in my area. “Rabid bat enters home; Health department issues warning.”
Perfect. If I die from a panic attack a pack of rapid bats can eat my decaying flesh instead of wild wolves. I can’t think of a more poetic disposal of my corpse. Nice. (BTW... Do bats come in packs?)
Friday, December 17, 2010
Did I just get served?
First, I've got to get better at remembering what fake name(s) I've assigned to the people I blog about, and remembering whether or not I've posted about that something with that someone, or some whatever, or not. But, right now, I'm not any better at remembering $hi!, so I'll just make my point...
I just got served. A booty call, that is. Whatever fake name I called this guy, a month or so ago, when I met him, just one of the dudes I met out and about, it doesn't matter.
He dropped off. After a bunch of text messages, and our planned/impromptu outing to buy some sage to burn and cleanse his ex-girlfriend's energy away, gone, baby, gone! That meet and greet didn't get smoked. He wussed out when it came to a real connection, to going beyond the chase, beyond just trying to ego finagle me into his snare with text messages. Yet, today, dah-dah, ta-dah, he texted me and tried again.
Can you say, "Let's just see if this biach is eazy and will sleepz wit' me?" (Which is so disappointing, because he was such a great conversationalist and I had more respect for him than his actions have just now commanded.)
"Hi Levan," was his opener.
I didn't know it was him, at first. He's got the same name as one of my long-lost friend's husbands, so I thought, Shoot! What's up with the text outa the blue? Everything okay?" Then, later, just now, I called back after the text, to see, what up?, and it took me a minute to figure out it was the guy I met, who bought me a draft beer with my beans and salad addiction at my local eatery, and it was the guy who, while financially successful, is personally stunted.
He actuality put it out there, to see if I'd bite. "I'm in this place where I'm just having fun. So if you want to hook up tonight..."
You player hole, you! Did you really think I was that girl? Kiss my better-than-that!
The phone conversation ended with him thinking he might still have a chance, even after I assured him I am way too old, and way too self actualized (no matter what life brings me), to be the booty call for some guy with a self/relationship identity crises.
Never the less, he may call again. But, as always, I reserve the right to forget to post, to forget a name, to forget if I've named a post, and to forget to care about those who haven't posted a sincere desire to be a real part of my life...
I just got served. A booty call, that is. Whatever fake name I called this guy, a month or so ago, when I met him, just one of the dudes I met out and about, it doesn't matter.
He dropped off. After a bunch of text messages, and our planned/impromptu outing to buy some sage to burn and cleanse his ex-girlfriend's energy away, gone, baby, gone! That meet and greet didn't get smoked. He wussed out when it came to a real connection, to going beyond the chase, beyond just trying to ego finagle me into his snare with text messages. Yet, today, dah-dah, ta-dah, he texted me and tried again.
Can you say, "Let's just see if this biach is eazy and will sleepz wit' me?" (Which is so disappointing, because he was such a great conversationalist and I had more respect for him than his actions have just now commanded.)
"Hi Levan," was his opener.
I didn't know it was him, at first. He's got the same name as one of my long-lost friend's husbands, so I thought, Shoot! What's up with the text outa the blue? Everything okay?" Then, later, just now, I called back after the text, to see, what up?, and it took me a minute to figure out it was the guy I met, who bought me a draft beer with my beans and salad addiction at my local eatery, and it was the guy who, while financially successful, is personally stunted.
He actuality put it out there, to see if I'd bite. "I'm in this place where I'm just having fun. So if you want to hook up tonight..."
You player hole, you! Did you really think I was that girl? Kiss my better-than-that!
The phone conversation ended with him thinking he might still have a chance, even after I assured him I am way too old, and way too self actualized (no matter what life brings me), to be the booty call for some guy with a self/relationship identity crises.
Never the less, he may call again. But, as always, I reserve the right to forget to post, to forget a name, to forget if I've named a post, and to forget to care about those who haven't posted a sincere desire to be a real part of my life...
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Holiday-itis?
You know how they call someone a short-timer when someone is on their way out of a job? What do they say? You have short-timer's syndrome? So, what do they call it when you can't wait to go get your holiday started, can't wait to go to Colorado, can't wait to sit on your ass, eat a velveeta and white-flour tortilla quesadilla (a staple meal in Jen's house), watch movies, and laugh about what belly buttom jam smells like with one of your best friends?
We'll probably also make a list on which celebrity women are hot enough to have IBS (irritable bowl syndrome), and get away with crapping the bed during sex. Yes. I know. My conversations with Jen are the stuff of 12 year-old boys, dirt clods and farts, and are totally gross and immature. (Can you see why I can't wait?)
I am so already there in my head. I am sitting in Jen's sunlight-filled living room and we're plotting our evening plans. Or, we are at lunch, and we're both drinking a beer way too early in the day. But it doesn't matter, because it's the holidays and the chilli rellenos, drafts, and laughter are flowing. Maybe I'm sleeping in and I can hear the little foot steps of Jen's daughters coming down the hallway and tiny voices outside the door, whispering, wondering, if Aunt Levan is up and is going to come out and play.
I'm also already sitting down in the den, by a crackling fire dancing it's way inside of a stone-rock fireplace, and I'm yelling up to Jen, "Bring me more wine when you get another beer. And bring me my own bowl... You're not hogging all the cheesy popcorn this time, damn it!"
I don't know what book I am polishing off yet, because I'm packing light this year to avoid baggage fees, but Jen's got a title or two I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to get my hands on. I also don't even know what, exactly, we are doing for Christmas eve or Christmas day. But I don't care.
Holiday vacation, two weeks off, resting my eyes from fluorescent lights and computers, gaining back the stress pounds I lost, laughing until beer comes out of my nose, HERE I COME!
We'll probably also make a list on which celebrity women are hot enough to have IBS (irritable bowl syndrome), and get away with crapping the bed during sex. Yes. I know. My conversations with Jen are the stuff of 12 year-old boys, dirt clods and farts, and are totally gross and immature. (Can you see why I can't wait?)
I am so already there in my head. I am sitting in Jen's sunlight-filled living room and we're plotting our evening plans. Or, we are at lunch, and we're both drinking a beer way too early in the day. But it doesn't matter, because it's the holidays and the chilli rellenos, drafts, and laughter are flowing. Maybe I'm sleeping in and I can hear the little foot steps of Jen's daughters coming down the hallway and tiny voices outside the door, whispering, wondering, if Aunt Levan is up and is going to come out and play.
I'm also already sitting down in the den, by a crackling fire dancing it's way inside of a stone-rock fireplace, and I'm yelling up to Jen, "Bring me more wine when you get another beer. And bring me my own bowl... You're not hogging all the cheesy popcorn this time, damn it!"
I don't know what book I am polishing off yet, because I'm packing light this year to avoid baggage fees, but Jen's got a title or two I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to get my hands on. I also don't even know what, exactly, we are doing for Christmas eve or Christmas day. But I don't care.
Holiday vacation, two weeks off, resting my eyes from fluorescent lights and computers, gaining back the stress pounds I lost, laughing until beer comes out of my nose, HERE I COME!
Surrender
This post took a while, and it is blong (that's what my friend Rod calls my long blog posts), but what can I say except that?
About a month or so ago I woke up with a hangover. I’d been talking on the phone with Jen the night before, and, before I knew it, 3-4 glasses of wine had gone down the hatch. This has happened before, where, because the conversation with Jen gets going, and we get to laughing, I think: What the heck? Just one glass. Jen thinks: Screw it, just one beer.
Then, the next morning, because "just one” ends up being more, Jen and I both wake up with a hangover. One of us picks up the phone first, but we both ask, “What the hell? How long were we on the phone and how much did we drink last night?”
The ick part this time is that it wasn’t a blue moon on a Friday or a Saturday night, like usual. I had to go to work the next morning. Jen didn’t. Drats! I was all by myself in my: Ah, man. Sonuva bitch this day is gonna be a helluva of a dragger.
Turned out, my day, while it felt like molasses had slowed the hands on the clock, was amazing. The hangover left me with the effect of being too tired to be stressed. I kept zoning out. It was awesome. I was in an all-day meditative state.
No thoughts, no resistance, just complete surrender to the current state, to the tired, to the Now. There was even a point where I took a walk, so I wouldn’t fall asleep at my desk, and the world had turned into this amazing shade of acceptance.
That’s when I think the paradigm shift hit, that I can’t keep resisting the Now, or resisting this job, or this place I live in, or this life. This everything that is on the outside of form that I think is supposed to make me happy on the inside of mind and emotion.
Ava, my fellow traveler, has been reminding me, all along, "This is all necessary, all the changes you are going through. This is part of your life," she's said. But, as we all know, and I know too well, we don’t always get the message when it comes to us. We come to the message when we are ready for it.
This has been a difficult thing for me to process, accepting that I am not always as ready as I’d like to be. It’s especially hard for me as I watch certain patterns repeat in my life, and I comprehend that life is giving me another chance to understand something about myself, and about what I am doing here, yet, while in the midst of an opportunity to learn and move forward, I watch myself remain rigid.
Sometimes it sucks, eh? Having good information in your head, or, rather, in your core. Knowing it’s there. Waiting for it to rise to the surface, to get some air so you can stop chocking on your own thoughts and catch your breath long enough to get over thinking too much.
Yet, the message gets lodged somewhere between deep knowing and the nag of your perceived reality, two such competing forces, that you can’t even hand the good thoughts a life jacket. How are you supposed breath in the good stuff when you are too busy sucking air through the pinched straw of all the negative energy swirling around in your head and gooing up your gray matter?
It’s true. There is no better way to keep a problem alive, or to make it worse, then by feeding it and ruminating over it in a non-productive way. No good comes from resistance. I know this.
I know we do all of our quality work when we are present and when our actions are guided by clear intuition and positivity. But the frail human part of us, all the soft and peach-like matter, can be just a bruise away from spoiling, can't it?
That’s why we regurgitate, over and over, all the acid. We are hungry for something. We don't always know what it is. So, we unconsciously feed off of the negative and find ourselves surprised when all the sweet under our thin skin starts to rot, when our thoughts become like a festering infection.
That’s when things get worse.
Most of the time things aren’t actually deteriorating. (Our situation isn’t really getting shittier.) But because our unconsciousness, our silly minds, believe everything is positively beastly, we often do feel that we’re getting more and more beaten down. But, again, it’s almost always mostly in our minds. It is our inner beasts that present themselves to us, to our ruminating mental rhetoric, as a threatening force capable of overtaking us.
That’s what was beginning to happen to me pre-hangover. My head shit was kicking my life’s ass.
Shoot, I’m never going to be the Dalai Lama. I’m barely Being my own level headed Levan lately. But, there are things I am certain of Now. I’ve got to hold on to and continue to practice and to build upon what little enlightenment I’ve cultivated over the years. Because if I don’t get some of my Zen back, living in this place, where I am resisting life and fearing it as it comes, it is going to kill me before I die.
That’s the truth for all of us. We all can think of a thousand horrible deaths. But, there are really only three ways to die: Mentally, physically, or emotionally (mind, body, or spirit), and getting stuck in your head is a lot like pulling the trigger.
Death by thinking too much? Are you kidding me? Is that really how I want to go?
I inherently know all suffering is in the mind. The mind creates the problems. The mind is responsible for the illusion that we are under attack from our lives. I know. I know. I know. It’s irrational, this behavior that sustains the preoccupations that can deteriorate our health. I so know.
My preoccupation with home and with work is what has allowed me to forget that there is a difference between life (life force) and a life situation (a lesson).
We are not our situations. Therefore, whatever fears we experience from them do not exist in reality. If our fears are not real they cannot define us. If we cannot be bound by these fears, than these fears only exist in our delusions—in the problems we create by constantly mulling a situation over in our mind. (That is how our fear becomes greater than our reality.)
"Worrying about something doesn't change the outcome. All you can do is take it day by day. Live here, in the Now, and don't let fear take you somewhere else. I can hear these words in my head. Yet, I’ve been doing exactly what doesn’t work. I’ve been resisting EVERYTHING.
I’ve not been surrendering to my life as it is, or to the moment as it comes. Nor have I been accepting the cycle of life. Instead, I’ve been putting tags on my life. This is good. This is bad. This sucks. This sucks not as much. This sucks more.
We are, as I’ve been exhibiting, living in resistance when we judge what is and label it acceptable or unacceptable. Nothing is ever, or either, wrong or right, wonderful or a fright. Everything is always just as it is and exists independent of our judgment.
Again, I’ve fallen off my own practice. I know change is the only constant. Nature knows this.
Nature does not resist the cycles of life. A tree doesn’t cry because it’s lost its leaves in the winter. A butterfly doesn’t need therapy because the wind it twits its wings upon keeps shifting. No. The tree gets new leaves in the spring, and talks to all the pretty girls who walk on by. The butterfly, totally unattached to the cocoon it came from, has already forgotten the cycle that came before and talks to the pretty girls even more.
This knowledge is what I was beginning to comfortably lean back into as I was strolling along on my work walk. Yes, in the middle of trying to think less, I thought, I have been going through a cycle. Soon, I’ll get some new leaves. But this has been my winter…in love, in home, and in work, and this is necessary.
As I began to surrender, I could feel some peace move back in. Then I laughed and wondered if a flower would sprout from my ass once my Spring arrives.
What came next is going to sound like pure Cheez from a can of Whiz, but I’m going for it. You with me?
The leaves on the trees, rustling in the soft air, began to whisper into my ears, talking to me like they’ve done before. Then they became positively and wonderfully boisterous in their declaration as they lulled me further into their pull. The sound of the birds, in those trees, and in the sky opening to me above, flapping their wings and chirping their chatter, echoed so profoundly it was as though a mega phone was magnifying their conversations and booming out the blast of the breeze gliding under their feathers.
Every zoom of a car whooshing by in the distance was like a wave breaking on the beach at my feet, thunderous but calming. The clicking, tapping, and sashaying of passersby’s shoes on the sidewalks and asphalt made a melody that began to vibrate in my heart. I felt like that kid in the movie August Rush, the little genius who could hear music in every-day sounds. (Not the genius part, just the music part.)
The silencing of my mind chatter had made my hearing so acute that I could only concentrate on each new auditory sensation between the gaps of stillness within. That day, that walk, those moments I spent so connected to nature, to the Oness, was, in effect, one of my few successful meditative experiences.
Side note: I suck at meditating. Every time I try to tap into the gap, I get more stressed because I just keep thinking, and thinking, and thinking. Then I think, again, even louder. Over, and over, my thinking mocks me. Man-o-man, I think some more, There is so not any stillness in me right now. SHIT!
That’s when the mega noise moves in and starts clanging around in my brain so hard every part of my body starts to gnarl from the neck down. As such, meditating has the effect of wigging me out instead of getting me to chill. (Meditating is something I definitely need more practice at.)
Later, not many hours after my work walk, while at Whole Foods, and still in my quasi-meditative state, I was engaged in a conversation with a clerk who assured me that I could open and eat (test drive) the Raw power bar I was questioning him about. Awesome. Then, after taking two quick bites of the bar, I almost blacked out.
I was looking straight at the clerk, and had just said, “Damn! This is good,” when I felt the light of my surroundings dim to the black circles caving in on my eyes.
My vision became tunneled. My knees threatened to buckle. The weight of gravity menaced my stance. My shoulders slid into a slant as the left side of me seemed to want to win a race against my right side in getting to the ground first.
My brain and body weren’t happy about the consciousness I was about to lose. My shoulders got the message to shake me back to attention and then told my head to rattle itself into place so my eyes could blink the black spots gone. Once I was mostly erect again, thanks to the white knuckle grip I’d gotten on the grocery buggy to keep my balance, I asked the clerk, “Did you see that? I almost passed out.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know," I answered. "If I walk away from you and then you hear the loud speaker say there’s a clean up on aisle 9, and it’s some blonde chick with a half eaten power bar in her hand, instead of a broken jar of spaghetti sauce, I guess I’m not.” Then I laughed. “No. Yeah. I'm fine.”
He thought I was joking. I knew I wasn’t.
I thought I was going to take three steps away from the only other human who had knowledge of fact that I almost took a dive, and that my lights really would go out. But I couldn’t admit that to him, a stranger, cool as he was.
I’ve never passed out in my life, unless wine was involved and I was 20 years old. I’ve only almost passed out twice before. Once, years ago, when I sliced into my finger while cutting an onion for a Thanksgiving dish, and, another time, even more years ago, when Mr. Gold Standard gave me such an orgasm it resulted in a Charlie horse in my right calf. The pain of that cramp sent my eyes rolling back further into my head than the orgasm did.
Too much information? Probably. The point is, two bites from a power bar, that’s not exactly a near-faint story I’d have picked for my repertoire.
Aside from my fear, I was also a little embarrassed. I’d just told this young, hip, Latin grocery clerk that I’d not had an easy time of eating lately, that I’d been losing my appetite from stress, and, rather than cramming one more avocado or a handful of nuts down my throat, to make sure I was getting my daily caloric intake, I thought I’d add in some other easy high-calorie points that weren’t as bad for me as a run to Taco bell. I didn’t want this clerk to think I had some eating disorder and that’s why I was feeling faint.
Another side note: Usually, I don’t lose my appetite from stress. I haven't lost my appetite in over 16 years, since the two days after my split from Mr. Gold Standard. My regular M.O.? I sidle up to french fries and cuddle up to a box of macaroni and cheese comfort. In other words, bring me carb over-load, zone-out, heaven, thanks.
Not that it mattered what this clerk guy’s impression of me was. I just knew in that moment I couldn’t take another accosting glance like so many people at work are still giving me, people who I can tell are just waiting for me to engage them long enough so they’ll have their in, so they can ask me how I lost my weight.
It may be the first time they’re getting their answer, but it’s the hundredth time I’ve had to have a conversation about myself I didn’t feel like having with a stranger. It’s been months since I’ve dropped my weight. I’d like to move on.
Plus, it’s still personal. These assholes don’t know how much research and responsibility I’ve put into the last eight and a half years of my life, trying to understand and manage my hypothyroidism in the healthiest possible way. It’s none of their business that I’ve spent the last two years of my life eating healthier than I’ve ever eaten, going mostly vegan, giving up my beloved cheese, my cherished dairy, my fried, floured, and comforting saturated and trans fats. Why should I have to tell them that even with excluding those heart killers and thigh fillers, it still took me more than a year to even loose the first 2 pounds?
I’m over assuring people that there’s nothing wrong with me; I’m currently at my normal weight (the weight I was my entire adult life before my thyroid crashed). I’m sick of explaining that I’ve been running 2-3 times a week for the last 8 months. Shit, people, it’s no secret how weight loss can be achieved if you don’t have an underlying health/psychological condition. And, BTW, quit treating me like I’m a murder mystery. If I didn’t open my book to you, I sure as hell don’t want you on my back page.
In all fairness, given the fact that the last five-seven pounds I’ve lost have probably been from the stress of the last five months, and that I did just have a near pass-out incident, right on the heels of my child-hood eczema coming back, and that I had also gotten a field of tiny stress bumps all over my back, along with a rash on my calves, I started to wonder if something, other than anxiety, was beginning to take my body down and if these annoying inquiring minds were seeing something I wasn't.
With heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis (just to name a few) running in my family, along with my thyroid condition, I can admit, in the whole 57 seconds from the time I’d almost passed out to walking away from the clerk, with my heart zooming faster and faster, I was starting to think the worst.
The clerk squinted his eyes at me. “Are you sure you are okay?”
He was starting to figure out that I wasn’t. He could probably see it registered on my face that my heart, to compensate for the blood pressure drop, had begun to over-do its job. There was no hiding how light headed and bugged out I'd gotten from the blood pressure dip and spike.
"I should get lower to the ground in case I really do go down," I continued to joke as I began to huddle into my knees. Then I lied to the clerk again, as I stood back up. “You know? Actually, I'm fine,” I said. “I just needed to catch my breath. That was weird, though, huh?”
Then, off I scurried. I was in a hurry to do my passing out at home.
As the check-out girl ran my power bars, hemp seeds, avocados, and barley over the scanner, I had so many questions pinging around in my head. Am I well enough to go back and get sandwich bread? Am I out of bread? Am I even going to make it home? Why am I worried about bread right now? Am I going to crash my car if I drive home? Am I going to have a heart attack while I am driving? Seriously…do I need bread? Will people slow their cars down to gawk at the girl who caused a pile up on Pacific Coast Highway? Okay, why won’t my heart stop racing? Am I having a heart attack right now? Should I call 911 when I get home or should I wait to see if I pass out in aisle 9? What’s happening to me?
After watching Heather, my old neighbor, slip into a seizure at the begging of this year (February 5, 2010: Everything is Connected? Prove it! post), and, equipped with the knowledge that along with both of my parents, my healthy, running uncle has also had a heart attack, I was going a bit berserk thinking all the stress I’d been collecting was going to be the curtain call.
Just as I was about to moronically operate a moving vehicle all the while light headed, shaky, and panicked, my friend Lyta, a great old friend from High School who I’d reconnected with on FaceBook months ago, texted me.
I needed someone there for me. I needed Lyta, who is still the same tenderhearted badass that back in high school I used to sneak out of class, and hide from the bouncers behind the 300 quad with, to smoke ciggies.
After explaining my predicament, I said, “Just talk to me. Keep me calm. I am about to drive and I probably shouldn’t, but I gotta get outa here.”
I wanted to give Lyta my address, just in case, but I didn’t know my address. My current lease clearly states that I cannot use the mail where I am living. If I am not getting mail where I live, then where I live is not my home, and people do not instinctively know the addresses to places that are not home.
Plus, I was too busy keeping my eyes on the road and keeping my knuckles white on a new grip, my car’s steering wheel, that I didn’t feel confident enough to quickly refer to the address card that I’ve been keeping in my wallet.
Time had become my enemy. With Lyta on the other end of the line, from the grocery-store aisle, to grocery-store parking lot, to me laying on my back in my own bed and staring up at the over-sized ceiling fan above me, that takes up half the damn bedroom ceiling, 30 minutes or more had spun into an eternity.
Dear Lord, I prayed, Please don’t let this annoying and constant reminder of my landlord, this beefy, eyesore of a ceiling fan, with its bulbous half-domed light, be the last thing I see. It’s bad enough that I can never find the fricken remote control to operate the blade speeds and the light brightness. Does this pregnant crème-colored glow with fat, brown, wooden elephant ears really need to taunt me now?
Worrying that I’d be leaving Lyta at the other end of the phone wondering if I was okay once I hung up, I took a chance that my upstairs neighbor would be home and could help me out. Also, since I couldn’t relax, and had relocated from my bed to the living room floor, I didn’t want to keel over alone in a living room that was not my home.
I’m not kidding. That’s where my head was. I was wondering if my worst fear would come true. For the record, I do not fear death. Nor do I fear living life alone. I do, however, fear dying alone. I’d rather die with strangers in a badly painted hospital room than die in a beautiful palace on my own. (I'm just not that evolved).
It felt a little weird tapping on a new neighbor’s door. A couple of questions came to mind. 1) “So? Would you mind watching me die on your porch?” 2) Can you call 911 for me? I can’t remember the number. ” 3) Do you remember me? We met yesterday.”
Trying not to look like a fritzed and confused cat with baggies on its feet, I settled on, “Hey. Hi. Something is happening to me and I’m sort of freaked out. Can you sit with me for a bit until I figure out what this is?”
Jo(that’s what we’re going to call the neighbor), a lean and lanky tom-boy of a gal with short, platinum, blond, spunky hair (the kind I wanted as a teenager), had no problem following me back to my place while I made some dinner and tried not to worry about the fact that over an hour had passed and my heart was still running the 100m Sprint.
“You’re having a panic attack,” Jo told me. “My ex used to have them all the time. You’re going to be fine. Have a glass of wine. Take deep breaths.”
Oh, okay. Great, thanks, I thought. Nothing to worry about here. I’ve never had a panic attack, but why shouldn’t I add a little more neurotic behavior into this nice little bag of bullshit I’m filling up for myself? Once I find a new place to live, if there’s a front lawn, I’ll have collected enough crap to use for my own fertilizer.
Too much wine the night before (dehydration from the hangover) was what I thought had gotten me into my mess, but I was willing to take my chances on a little hair of the dog rather than continue to be ravaged by the unknown beast ambushing my every fear.
Eventually, Jo was able to leave me to a cup of hot tea, my television, and a mostly normal heart beat. Now, post that panic attack, past the preoccupations (the obsessive thinking), I have to ask myself: Did I really need to get this knocked-off my balance in order to get some of it back? And who pushed me off my rock, damn it?
Was it Bull #1, the boss in my last job? How about Bull #2, the boss in this job? What about the crazy bi-polar bitch of a boss, who I worked for just before I starting working for Bull #1? Did she start my undoing?
Maybe it was getting laid off from the best job I’ve ever had, along with those 4,000 other folks, in the company I worked for about three and a half or so years ago when this economy started to take a dive. Was that the start of it?
Or was it hitting that slick spot in the pavement, where the rain had brought the oil up from the asphalt, and fishtailing my way into rolling my car onto its side three weeks before my un-employment, from that lay off, was about to run out?
I can’t say when this winter that I’ve been in started. Nor can I claim to understand each lesson I am supposed to learn every time I loose my leaves. All I can do is what I’ve been doing. The best I can, each time.
I remember waking up after rolling my car, with only a tiny bump of a bruise on my head, and thinking that I was one of the luckiest and blessed people in the world. I’d never felt more grateful for everything I did have in my life... everything from the small things, like being lucky enough to have a warm bed with high-thread count sheets to sleep on, right on down to best stuff, like friends who’d give me their couch if I didn’t have a place to put my own warm bed.
The cycle of things has never been lost on me. Just as with the trees and the butterflies, there are cycles in a person’s life. Those cycles can last an hour, a day. They can span over weeks, or even spread through years. This is why I’ve been asking myself how I have come to a place where I became physically affected from the stress of one of my life’s cycles, especially when I know change is still coming. Peeks and valleys are inevitable.
Living in a dark cave of a condo, while it’s f’n with my psyche, is not a brain tumor or cancer. My job, the bad boss, they’re also both external things that my happiness, my ability to navigate with inner peace in life, shouldn't be dependent upon.
However, for each of us, how we deal with external issues (the world of form and illusion), is different and it is the same. I am not any different from anyone else who would also be adversely affected by these same things. Where we live and how we make our money to pay for where we live is a big deal to us.
That said, I am learning to accept that I am apparently a doofus when it comes to anxiety. While I get the concept of change, and know everything in life, of form, which includes everything tangible from our home, to our job, to our cars, to our good dishes, aren’t where happiness comes from, I still, in my human frailty, cling to the notion that it is those things outside of me that will support my happiness, my balance.
For a better part of a day, I let go of those inclinations, and I surrendered to life as it is, during what I am going to refer to as the great meditative hangover of 2010. But, a week and a half later, I had my second panic attack. (Go me! Way to egg this neurotic behavior on.)
Actually, I can pinpoint the culmination of events that lead to the second attack, so at least I’m becoming more conscious in my reactions to my stress. That’s gotta be at least 2 points for the head-case team, yeah?
On a Monday I had the pleasure of sitting next to Bull #2 at a work luncheon…
Screech!
Before we proceed, I’d like punctuate that I hate most work luncheons and functions. No. I ice-pick-in-the-eye-ball hate them. I abhor being expected to spend an hour or more of my precious passing minutes on earth, or any of my stress-earned cash, on time or a meal with people who 90% of the time I’d rather avoid than trade hot and idle air with. Forced socialization is bullshit.
So, since I’ve been tasked with attending not one, or two, but at least six or seven birthday meals, or going-away lunches, holiday parties, or blah-F’n this work functions that, in less than seven months, and, being the sensitive person I am, each time I have done my best to stay clear of anyone who threatens the balance of the energy within my personal field, I got jacked when I wasn't able to physically maneuver the way I wanted. In other words, I’ve chosen the furthest corner, of every shared table and room, from Bull #2.
But on that Monday past, it didn’t work. There Bull #2 was, the boss, sitting right next to me, and, because no one had complied with Bull #2’s request to share a meal, calling people piglets for ordering their own meal. The boss only called everyone a piglet about five times, then let it go. No big deal. The boss was just joking. Derogatory comments are totally okay if you attempt to mask them in humor and you have a high rank in the company.
On the boss went, into cajoling at least half of the table into asking for a drink of their own, so the wine the boss ordered would not be sipped alone. Sadly, those lambs weren’t knowingly conscious of the fact that the boss was already buzzed on the bulldozing effect of broadening the spectrum of power, beyond the office domain, before the alcohol glass bottoms were even tipped.
But I knew. I could feel it. It wouldn’t have mattered if Bull #2 had laid into me or not those weeks ago I’ve previously mentioned. I sense when a person in power is abusing their authority, misusing their position over others, and it hurts my heart. My shield isn’t thick enough. Put frankly, it sickens me and that behavior is part of what weakens my defenses.
That’s why, when, a Tuesday later, my landlord came-a-calling upon the office next to my cube, I slipped into another panic attack. Did I mention that the person I rent from is someone I work with? (Can’t remember.) Did I mention that there was the possibility looming that, because the reporting structure at work is changing, there was a time I was led to believe that my landlord might become my new boss? (I’ve only just recently learned otherwise.)
My first instinct was to plug my earphones into my ears in order to drown out the voice of the threatening $400.00 a month rent-raising, pretend-to-be-a-friend (but really a wolf) landlord out. But, despite my best efforts to think in my head: Screw you! My body decided to screw me.
Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! A second panic attack was in the mix’n!
Yay! Go me, again! Christmas has come early for the crazy. Where’s the magic, fat man? I wanted Santa to bring me a sunny new place, not a neurotic personality.
On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen! To the top of the shady porch where I live with the noisy bitch and her dog above, to the top of the wall and the tree blocking it that gets no sunlight at all, now dash away, dash away all, and flee from work today before this second panic attack really makes your heart stall.
I joke, but it was no joke to me—this next panic attack. It came on with a bigger vengance.
Whatever I wasn’t coping with, have been conscious of, not conscious of, and whatever had/has riddled me again with such alarm that my body was reacting to a need to flee, concerned me. Bull #2 and the landlord, they are not the cause. They are catalysts. This I also know.
The effect is rarely a direct result of the cause. Our reaction is not the reason.
I know most of my beasts. I have lived with, gotten over, punched through, and healed from so many of them. Some, like a boulder on my back, I still carry. We all have our burdens to bare, to let go of. Those afflictions we’ve defined and those we’re still blind to.
Whether we can name our encumbrances or they remain innominate to us, what’s important is that we learn to accept the tenancy of our life, of these lessons, for what they are. If we do not surrender to what is, to what will change, what will cycle through us, because of us, in spite of us, and for us, than we will never know the sweet surrender of life’s blessings.
Am I good yet? Have I learned to totally surrender?
On the F’n contrary. I’m so human that I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself in another “Z” shaped huddled mass, elbows parallel to my knees on the bland-ass, 1980s, high-shag, beige carpet (which I’ve covered with red drop rugs so I can get every penny of my deposit back), crying, and wishing that more sunlight would wake me up in the morning.
In the mean time, I’m good with accepting that most days my chin will be up. Other days, it won’t be as easy to ditch the heavy work puts in my brows, or as simple as flicking the forward weight out of my shoulders from stress. Until I move into the sun again (and I mean that as literally as finding a new place to live) I might still have some mornings where it takes me a little longer to unscoop the “C” shape out of my sleeping middle.
And, while it may seem that I started this year with such zeal and promise, and have, in many ways, ended up, in what appears to be, the worse for wear towards this year’s end, I have every faith that I am going to look back on this year as one of the most important times in my life.
I may not have all the answers Now, and may not ever get all the answers I want out of this cycle, but I’d rather admit that I know less and continue to fail in front of others while I am trying to succeed, than make up a favorable outcome that doesn’t exist, and, in that deceit, make others feel like they’ve failed.
The reason I write is to unite myself with others. The only way to close the gap between us is to let go of what separates us, our pride, our secrets, our fear of failure. If that is the lesson this year has taught me, I think I’ve learned it well. It’s okay to fail, to be human and to be affected by a difficult time, for as long or for as short as that cycle's lesson lasts.
It’s okay of if you don’t know how to surrender.
I'm still learning, too.
About a month or so ago I woke up with a hangover. I’d been talking on the phone with Jen the night before, and, before I knew it, 3-4 glasses of wine had gone down the hatch. This has happened before, where, because the conversation with Jen gets going, and we get to laughing, I think: What the heck? Just one glass. Jen thinks: Screw it, just one beer.
Then, the next morning, because "just one” ends up being more, Jen and I both wake up with a hangover. One of us picks up the phone first, but we both ask, “What the hell? How long were we on the phone and how much did we drink last night?”
The ick part this time is that it wasn’t a blue moon on a Friday or a Saturday night, like usual. I had to go to work the next morning. Jen didn’t. Drats! I was all by myself in my: Ah, man. Sonuva bitch this day is gonna be a helluva of a dragger.
Turned out, my day, while it felt like molasses had slowed the hands on the clock, was amazing. The hangover left me with the effect of being too tired to be stressed. I kept zoning out. It was awesome. I was in an all-day meditative state.
No thoughts, no resistance, just complete surrender to the current state, to the tired, to the Now. There was even a point where I took a walk, so I wouldn’t fall asleep at my desk, and the world had turned into this amazing shade of acceptance.
That’s when I think the paradigm shift hit, that I can’t keep resisting the Now, or resisting this job, or this place I live in, or this life. This everything that is on the outside of form that I think is supposed to make me happy on the inside of mind and emotion.
Ava, my fellow traveler, has been reminding me, all along, "This is all necessary, all the changes you are going through. This is part of your life," she's said. But, as we all know, and I know too well, we don’t always get the message when it comes to us. We come to the message when we are ready for it.
This has been a difficult thing for me to process, accepting that I am not always as ready as I’d like to be. It’s especially hard for me as I watch certain patterns repeat in my life, and I comprehend that life is giving me another chance to understand something about myself, and about what I am doing here, yet, while in the midst of an opportunity to learn and move forward, I watch myself remain rigid.
Sometimes it sucks, eh? Having good information in your head, or, rather, in your core. Knowing it’s there. Waiting for it to rise to the surface, to get some air so you can stop chocking on your own thoughts and catch your breath long enough to get over thinking too much.
Yet, the message gets lodged somewhere between deep knowing and the nag of your perceived reality, two such competing forces, that you can’t even hand the good thoughts a life jacket. How are you supposed breath in the good stuff when you are too busy sucking air through the pinched straw of all the negative energy swirling around in your head and gooing up your gray matter?
It’s true. There is no better way to keep a problem alive, or to make it worse, then by feeding it and ruminating over it in a non-productive way. No good comes from resistance. I know this.
I know we do all of our quality work when we are present and when our actions are guided by clear intuition and positivity. But the frail human part of us, all the soft and peach-like matter, can be just a bruise away from spoiling, can't it?
That’s why we regurgitate, over and over, all the acid. We are hungry for something. We don't always know what it is. So, we unconsciously feed off of the negative and find ourselves surprised when all the sweet under our thin skin starts to rot, when our thoughts become like a festering infection.
That’s when things get worse.
Most of the time things aren’t actually deteriorating. (Our situation isn’t really getting shittier.) But because our unconsciousness, our silly minds, believe everything is positively beastly, we often do feel that we’re getting more and more beaten down. But, again, it’s almost always mostly in our minds. It is our inner beasts that present themselves to us, to our ruminating mental rhetoric, as a threatening force capable of overtaking us.
That’s what was beginning to happen to me pre-hangover. My head shit was kicking my life’s ass.
Shoot, I’m never going to be the Dalai Lama. I’m barely Being my own level headed Levan lately. But, there are things I am certain of Now. I’ve got to hold on to and continue to practice and to build upon what little enlightenment I’ve cultivated over the years. Because if I don’t get some of my Zen back, living in this place, where I am resisting life and fearing it as it comes, it is going to kill me before I die.
That’s the truth for all of us. We all can think of a thousand horrible deaths. But, there are really only three ways to die: Mentally, physically, or emotionally (mind, body, or spirit), and getting stuck in your head is a lot like pulling the trigger.
Death by thinking too much? Are you kidding me? Is that really how I want to go?
I inherently know all suffering is in the mind. The mind creates the problems. The mind is responsible for the illusion that we are under attack from our lives. I know. I know. I know. It’s irrational, this behavior that sustains the preoccupations that can deteriorate our health. I so know.
My preoccupation with home and with work is what has allowed me to forget that there is a difference between life (life force) and a life situation (a lesson).
We are not our situations. Therefore, whatever fears we experience from them do not exist in reality. If our fears are not real they cannot define us. If we cannot be bound by these fears, than these fears only exist in our delusions—in the problems we create by constantly mulling a situation over in our mind. (That is how our fear becomes greater than our reality.)
"Worrying about something doesn't change the outcome. All you can do is take it day by day. Live here, in the Now, and don't let fear take you somewhere else. I can hear these words in my head. Yet, I’ve been doing exactly what doesn’t work. I’ve been resisting EVERYTHING.
I’ve not been surrendering to my life as it is, or to the moment as it comes. Nor have I been accepting the cycle of life. Instead, I’ve been putting tags on my life. This is good. This is bad. This sucks. This sucks not as much. This sucks more.
We are, as I’ve been exhibiting, living in resistance when we judge what is and label it acceptable or unacceptable. Nothing is ever, or either, wrong or right, wonderful or a fright. Everything is always just as it is and exists independent of our judgment.
Again, I’ve fallen off my own practice. I know change is the only constant. Nature knows this.
Nature does not resist the cycles of life. A tree doesn’t cry because it’s lost its leaves in the winter. A butterfly doesn’t need therapy because the wind it twits its wings upon keeps shifting. No. The tree gets new leaves in the spring, and talks to all the pretty girls who walk on by. The butterfly, totally unattached to the cocoon it came from, has already forgotten the cycle that came before and talks to the pretty girls even more.
This knowledge is what I was beginning to comfortably lean back into as I was strolling along on my work walk. Yes, in the middle of trying to think less, I thought, I have been going through a cycle. Soon, I’ll get some new leaves. But this has been my winter…in love, in home, and in work, and this is necessary.
As I began to surrender, I could feel some peace move back in. Then I laughed and wondered if a flower would sprout from my ass once my Spring arrives.
What came next is going to sound like pure Cheez from a can of Whiz, but I’m going for it. You with me?
The leaves on the trees, rustling in the soft air, began to whisper into my ears, talking to me like they’ve done before. Then they became positively and wonderfully boisterous in their declaration as they lulled me further into their pull. The sound of the birds, in those trees, and in the sky opening to me above, flapping their wings and chirping their chatter, echoed so profoundly it was as though a mega phone was magnifying their conversations and booming out the blast of the breeze gliding under their feathers.
Every zoom of a car whooshing by in the distance was like a wave breaking on the beach at my feet, thunderous but calming. The clicking, tapping, and sashaying of passersby’s shoes on the sidewalks and asphalt made a melody that began to vibrate in my heart. I felt like that kid in the movie August Rush, the little genius who could hear music in every-day sounds. (Not the genius part, just the music part.)
The silencing of my mind chatter had made my hearing so acute that I could only concentrate on each new auditory sensation between the gaps of stillness within. That day, that walk, those moments I spent so connected to nature, to the Oness, was, in effect, one of my few successful meditative experiences.
Side note: I suck at meditating. Every time I try to tap into the gap, I get more stressed because I just keep thinking, and thinking, and thinking. Then I think, again, even louder. Over, and over, my thinking mocks me. Man-o-man, I think some more, There is so not any stillness in me right now. SHIT!
That’s when the mega noise moves in and starts clanging around in my brain so hard every part of my body starts to gnarl from the neck down. As such, meditating has the effect of wigging me out instead of getting me to chill. (Meditating is something I definitely need more practice at.)
Later, not many hours after my work walk, while at Whole Foods, and still in my quasi-meditative state, I was engaged in a conversation with a clerk who assured me that I could open and eat (test drive) the Raw power bar I was questioning him about. Awesome. Then, after taking two quick bites of the bar, I almost blacked out.
I was looking straight at the clerk, and had just said, “Damn! This is good,” when I felt the light of my surroundings dim to the black circles caving in on my eyes.
My vision became tunneled. My knees threatened to buckle. The weight of gravity menaced my stance. My shoulders slid into a slant as the left side of me seemed to want to win a race against my right side in getting to the ground first.
My brain and body weren’t happy about the consciousness I was about to lose. My shoulders got the message to shake me back to attention and then told my head to rattle itself into place so my eyes could blink the black spots gone. Once I was mostly erect again, thanks to the white knuckle grip I’d gotten on the grocery buggy to keep my balance, I asked the clerk, “Did you see that? I almost passed out.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know," I answered. "If I walk away from you and then you hear the loud speaker say there’s a clean up on aisle 9, and it’s some blonde chick with a half eaten power bar in her hand, instead of a broken jar of spaghetti sauce, I guess I’m not.” Then I laughed. “No. Yeah. I'm fine.”
He thought I was joking. I knew I wasn’t.
I thought I was going to take three steps away from the only other human who had knowledge of fact that I almost took a dive, and that my lights really would go out. But I couldn’t admit that to him, a stranger, cool as he was.
I’ve never passed out in my life, unless wine was involved and I was 20 years old. I’ve only almost passed out twice before. Once, years ago, when I sliced into my finger while cutting an onion for a Thanksgiving dish, and, another time, even more years ago, when Mr. Gold Standard gave me such an orgasm it resulted in a Charlie horse in my right calf. The pain of that cramp sent my eyes rolling back further into my head than the orgasm did.
Too much information? Probably. The point is, two bites from a power bar, that’s not exactly a near-faint story I’d have picked for my repertoire.
Aside from my fear, I was also a little embarrassed. I’d just told this young, hip, Latin grocery clerk that I’d not had an easy time of eating lately, that I’d been losing my appetite from stress, and, rather than cramming one more avocado or a handful of nuts down my throat, to make sure I was getting my daily caloric intake, I thought I’d add in some other easy high-calorie points that weren’t as bad for me as a run to Taco bell. I didn’t want this clerk to think I had some eating disorder and that’s why I was feeling faint.
Another side note: Usually, I don’t lose my appetite from stress. I haven't lost my appetite in over 16 years, since the two days after my split from Mr. Gold Standard. My regular M.O.? I sidle up to french fries and cuddle up to a box of macaroni and cheese comfort. In other words, bring me carb over-load, zone-out, heaven, thanks.
Not that it mattered what this clerk guy’s impression of me was. I just knew in that moment I couldn’t take another accosting glance like so many people at work are still giving me, people who I can tell are just waiting for me to engage them long enough so they’ll have their in, so they can ask me how I lost my weight.
It may be the first time they’re getting their answer, but it’s the hundredth time I’ve had to have a conversation about myself I didn’t feel like having with a stranger. It’s been months since I’ve dropped my weight. I’d like to move on.
Plus, it’s still personal. These assholes don’t know how much research and responsibility I’ve put into the last eight and a half years of my life, trying to understand and manage my hypothyroidism in the healthiest possible way. It’s none of their business that I’ve spent the last two years of my life eating healthier than I’ve ever eaten, going mostly vegan, giving up my beloved cheese, my cherished dairy, my fried, floured, and comforting saturated and trans fats. Why should I have to tell them that even with excluding those heart killers and thigh fillers, it still took me more than a year to even loose the first 2 pounds?
I’m over assuring people that there’s nothing wrong with me; I’m currently at my normal weight (the weight I was my entire adult life before my thyroid crashed). I’m sick of explaining that I’ve been running 2-3 times a week for the last 8 months. Shit, people, it’s no secret how weight loss can be achieved if you don’t have an underlying health/psychological condition. And, BTW, quit treating me like I’m a murder mystery. If I didn’t open my book to you, I sure as hell don’t want you on my back page.
In all fairness, given the fact that the last five-seven pounds I’ve lost have probably been from the stress of the last five months, and that I did just have a near pass-out incident, right on the heels of my child-hood eczema coming back, and that I had also gotten a field of tiny stress bumps all over my back, along with a rash on my calves, I started to wonder if something, other than anxiety, was beginning to take my body down and if these annoying inquiring minds were seeing something I wasn't.
With heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis (just to name a few) running in my family, along with my thyroid condition, I can admit, in the whole 57 seconds from the time I’d almost passed out to walking away from the clerk, with my heart zooming faster and faster, I was starting to think the worst.
The clerk squinted his eyes at me. “Are you sure you are okay?”
He was starting to figure out that I wasn’t. He could probably see it registered on my face that my heart, to compensate for the blood pressure drop, had begun to over-do its job. There was no hiding how light headed and bugged out I'd gotten from the blood pressure dip and spike.
"I should get lower to the ground in case I really do go down," I continued to joke as I began to huddle into my knees. Then I lied to the clerk again, as I stood back up. “You know? Actually, I'm fine,” I said. “I just needed to catch my breath. That was weird, though, huh?”
Then, off I scurried. I was in a hurry to do my passing out at home.
As the check-out girl ran my power bars, hemp seeds, avocados, and barley over the scanner, I had so many questions pinging around in my head. Am I well enough to go back and get sandwich bread? Am I out of bread? Am I even going to make it home? Why am I worried about bread right now? Am I going to crash my car if I drive home? Am I going to have a heart attack while I am driving? Seriously…do I need bread? Will people slow their cars down to gawk at the girl who caused a pile up on Pacific Coast Highway? Okay, why won’t my heart stop racing? Am I having a heart attack right now? Should I call 911 when I get home or should I wait to see if I pass out in aisle 9? What’s happening to me?
After watching Heather, my old neighbor, slip into a seizure at the begging of this year (February 5, 2010: Everything is Connected? Prove it! post), and, equipped with the knowledge that along with both of my parents, my healthy, running uncle has also had a heart attack, I was going a bit berserk thinking all the stress I’d been collecting was going to be the curtain call.
Just as I was about to moronically operate a moving vehicle all the while light headed, shaky, and panicked, my friend Lyta, a great old friend from High School who I’d reconnected with on FaceBook months ago, texted me.
I needed someone there for me. I needed Lyta, who is still the same tenderhearted badass that back in high school I used to sneak out of class, and hide from the bouncers behind the 300 quad with, to smoke ciggies.
After explaining my predicament, I said, “Just talk to me. Keep me calm. I am about to drive and I probably shouldn’t, but I gotta get outa here.”
I wanted to give Lyta my address, just in case, but I didn’t know my address. My current lease clearly states that I cannot use the mail where I am living. If I am not getting mail where I live, then where I live is not my home, and people do not instinctively know the addresses to places that are not home.
Plus, I was too busy keeping my eyes on the road and keeping my knuckles white on a new grip, my car’s steering wheel, that I didn’t feel confident enough to quickly refer to the address card that I’ve been keeping in my wallet.
Time had become my enemy. With Lyta on the other end of the line, from the grocery-store aisle, to grocery-store parking lot, to me laying on my back in my own bed and staring up at the over-sized ceiling fan above me, that takes up half the damn bedroom ceiling, 30 minutes or more had spun into an eternity.
Dear Lord, I prayed, Please don’t let this annoying and constant reminder of my landlord, this beefy, eyesore of a ceiling fan, with its bulbous half-domed light, be the last thing I see. It’s bad enough that I can never find the fricken remote control to operate the blade speeds and the light brightness. Does this pregnant crème-colored glow with fat, brown, wooden elephant ears really need to taunt me now?
Worrying that I’d be leaving Lyta at the other end of the phone wondering if I was okay once I hung up, I took a chance that my upstairs neighbor would be home and could help me out. Also, since I couldn’t relax, and had relocated from my bed to the living room floor, I didn’t want to keel over alone in a living room that was not my home.
I’m not kidding. That’s where my head was. I was wondering if my worst fear would come true. For the record, I do not fear death. Nor do I fear living life alone. I do, however, fear dying alone. I’d rather die with strangers in a badly painted hospital room than die in a beautiful palace on my own. (I'm just not that evolved).
It felt a little weird tapping on a new neighbor’s door. A couple of questions came to mind. 1) “So? Would you mind watching me die on your porch?” 2) Can you call 911 for me? I can’t remember the number. ” 3) Do you remember me? We met yesterday.”
Trying not to look like a fritzed and confused cat with baggies on its feet, I settled on, “Hey. Hi. Something is happening to me and I’m sort of freaked out. Can you sit with me for a bit until I figure out what this is?”
Jo(that’s what we’re going to call the neighbor), a lean and lanky tom-boy of a gal with short, platinum, blond, spunky hair (the kind I wanted as a teenager), had no problem following me back to my place while I made some dinner and tried not to worry about the fact that over an hour had passed and my heart was still running the 100m Sprint.
“You’re having a panic attack,” Jo told me. “My ex used to have them all the time. You’re going to be fine. Have a glass of wine. Take deep breaths.”
Oh, okay. Great, thanks, I thought. Nothing to worry about here. I’ve never had a panic attack, but why shouldn’t I add a little more neurotic behavior into this nice little bag of bullshit I’m filling up for myself? Once I find a new place to live, if there’s a front lawn, I’ll have collected enough crap to use for my own fertilizer.
Too much wine the night before (dehydration from the hangover) was what I thought had gotten me into my mess, but I was willing to take my chances on a little hair of the dog rather than continue to be ravaged by the unknown beast ambushing my every fear.
Eventually, Jo was able to leave me to a cup of hot tea, my television, and a mostly normal heart beat. Now, post that panic attack, past the preoccupations (the obsessive thinking), I have to ask myself: Did I really need to get this knocked-off my balance in order to get some of it back? And who pushed me off my rock, damn it?
Was it Bull #1, the boss in my last job? How about Bull #2, the boss in this job? What about the crazy bi-polar bitch of a boss, who I worked for just before I starting working for Bull #1? Did she start my undoing?
Maybe it was getting laid off from the best job I’ve ever had, along with those 4,000 other folks, in the company I worked for about three and a half or so years ago when this economy started to take a dive. Was that the start of it?
Or was it hitting that slick spot in the pavement, where the rain had brought the oil up from the asphalt, and fishtailing my way into rolling my car onto its side three weeks before my un-employment, from that lay off, was about to run out?
I can’t say when this winter that I’ve been in started. Nor can I claim to understand each lesson I am supposed to learn every time I loose my leaves. All I can do is what I’ve been doing. The best I can, each time.
I remember waking up after rolling my car, with only a tiny bump of a bruise on my head, and thinking that I was one of the luckiest and blessed people in the world. I’d never felt more grateful for everything I did have in my life... everything from the small things, like being lucky enough to have a warm bed with high-thread count sheets to sleep on, right on down to best stuff, like friends who’d give me their couch if I didn’t have a place to put my own warm bed.
The cycle of things has never been lost on me. Just as with the trees and the butterflies, there are cycles in a person’s life. Those cycles can last an hour, a day. They can span over weeks, or even spread through years. This is why I’ve been asking myself how I have come to a place where I became physically affected from the stress of one of my life’s cycles, especially when I know change is still coming. Peeks and valleys are inevitable.
Living in a dark cave of a condo, while it’s f’n with my psyche, is not a brain tumor or cancer. My job, the bad boss, they’re also both external things that my happiness, my ability to navigate with inner peace in life, shouldn't be dependent upon.
However, for each of us, how we deal with external issues (the world of form and illusion), is different and it is the same. I am not any different from anyone else who would also be adversely affected by these same things. Where we live and how we make our money to pay for where we live is a big deal to us.
That said, I am learning to accept that I am apparently a doofus when it comes to anxiety. While I get the concept of change, and know everything in life, of form, which includes everything tangible from our home, to our job, to our cars, to our good dishes, aren’t where happiness comes from, I still, in my human frailty, cling to the notion that it is those things outside of me that will support my happiness, my balance.
For a better part of a day, I let go of those inclinations, and I surrendered to life as it is, during what I am going to refer to as the great meditative hangover of 2010. But, a week and a half later, I had my second panic attack. (Go me! Way to egg this neurotic behavior on.)
Actually, I can pinpoint the culmination of events that lead to the second attack, so at least I’m becoming more conscious in my reactions to my stress. That’s gotta be at least 2 points for the head-case team, yeah?
On a Monday I had the pleasure of sitting next to Bull #2 at a work luncheon…
Screech!
Before we proceed, I’d like punctuate that I hate most work luncheons and functions. No. I ice-pick-in-the-eye-ball hate them. I abhor being expected to spend an hour or more of my precious passing minutes on earth, or any of my stress-earned cash, on time or a meal with people who 90% of the time I’d rather avoid than trade hot and idle air with. Forced socialization is bullshit.
So, since I’ve been tasked with attending not one, or two, but at least six or seven birthday meals, or going-away lunches, holiday parties, or blah-F’n this work functions that, in less than seven months, and, being the sensitive person I am, each time I have done my best to stay clear of anyone who threatens the balance of the energy within my personal field, I got jacked when I wasn't able to physically maneuver the way I wanted. In other words, I’ve chosen the furthest corner, of every shared table and room, from Bull #2.
But on that Monday past, it didn’t work. There Bull #2 was, the boss, sitting right next to me, and, because no one had complied with Bull #2’s request to share a meal, calling people piglets for ordering their own meal. The boss only called everyone a piglet about five times, then let it go. No big deal. The boss was just joking. Derogatory comments are totally okay if you attempt to mask them in humor and you have a high rank in the company.
On the boss went, into cajoling at least half of the table into asking for a drink of their own, so the wine the boss ordered would not be sipped alone. Sadly, those lambs weren’t knowingly conscious of the fact that the boss was already buzzed on the bulldozing effect of broadening the spectrum of power, beyond the office domain, before the alcohol glass bottoms were even tipped.
But I knew. I could feel it. It wouldn’t have mattered if Bull #2 had laid into me or not those weeks ago I’ve previously mentioned. I sense when a person in power is abusing their authority, misusing their position over others, and it hurts my heart. My shield isn’t thick enough. Put frankly, it sickens me and that behavior is part of what weakens my defenses.
That’s why, when, a Tuesday later, my landlord came-a-calling upon the office next to my cube, I slipped into another panic attack. Did I mention that the person I rent from is someone I work with? (Can’t remember.) Did I mention that there was the possibility looming that, because the reporting structure at work is changing, there was a time I was led to believe that my landlord might become my new boss? (I’ve only just recently learned otherwise.)
My first instinct was to plug my earphones into my ears in order to drown out the voice of the threatening $400.00 a month rent-raising, pretend-to-be-a-friend (but really a wolf) landlord out. But, despite my best efforts to think in my head: Screw you! My body decided to screw me.
Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! A second panic attack was in the mix’n!
Yay! Go me, again! Christmas has come early for the crazy. Where’s the magic, fat man? I wanted Santa to bring me a sunny new place, not a neurotic personality.
On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen! To the top of the shady porch where I live with the noisy bitch and her dog above, to the top of the wall and the tree blocking it that gets no sunlight at all, now dash away, dash away all, and flee from work today before this second panic attack really makes your heart stall.
I joke, but it was no joke to me—this next panic attack. It came on with a bigger vengance.
Whatever I wasn’t coping with, have been conscious of, not conscious of, and whatever had/has riddled me again with such alarm that my body was reacting to a need to flee, concerned me. Bull #2 and the landlord, they are not the cause. They are catalysts. This I also know.
The effect is rarely a direct result of the cause. Our reaction is not the reason.
I know most of my beasts. I have lived with, gotten over, punched through, and healed from so many of them. Some, like a boulder on my back, I still carry. We all have our burdens to bare, to let go of. Those afflictions we’ve defined and those we’re still blind to.
Whether we can name our encumbrances or they remain innominate to us, what’s important is that we learn to accept the tenancy of our life, of these lessons, for what they are. If we do not surrender to what is, to what will change, what will cycle through us, because of us, in spite of us, and for us, than we will never know the sweet surrender of life’s blessings.
Am I good yet? Have I learned to totally surrender?
On the F’n contrary. I’m so human that I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself in another “Z” shaped huddled mass, elbows parallel to my knees on the bland-ass, 1980s, high-shag, beige carpet (which I’ve covered with red drop rugs so I can get every penny of my deposit back), crying, and wishing that more sunlight would wake me up in the morning.
In the mean time, I’m good with accepting that most days my chin will be up. Other days, it won’t be as easy to ditch the heavy work puts in my brows, or as simple as flicking the forward weight out of my shoulders from stress. Until I move into the sun again (and I mean that as literally as finding a new place to live) I might still have some mornings where it takes me a little longer to unscoop the “C” shape out of my sleeping middle.
And, while it may seem that I started this year with such zeal and promise, and have, in many ways, ended up, in what appears to be, the worse for wear towards this year’s end, I have every faith that I am going to look back on this year as one of the most important times in my life.
I may not have all the answers Now, and may not ever get all the answers I want out of this cycle, but I’d rather admit that I know less and continue to fail in front of others while I am trying to succeed, than make up a favorable outcome that doesn’t exist, and, in that deceit, make others feel like they’ve failed.
The reason I write is to unite myself with others. The only way to close the gap between us is to let go of what separates us, our pride, our secrets, our fear of failure. If that is the lesson this year has taught me, I think I’ve learned it well. It’s okay to fail, to be human and to be affected by a difficult time, for as long or for as short as that cycle's lesson lasts.
It’s okay of if you don’t know how to surrender.
I'm still learning, too.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Friday Night Fun
You know my life is exciting when it is a Friday night and, rather than tipping one back out and about on the town, I am about to settle into my couch to watch a movie after I just got off the phone with Jen where we had an actual argument about who it was, in a similarly dip-shit-ish conversation, that originally came up with the right combination of what belly button jam smells like: ass and feet or ass and arm pit.
We’re now both convinced that ass and feet is the smell winner, yet we are not convinced on who first decided that is what belly lint stinks like.
Let me point out that we might as well be 16 years old, or just going through puberty, popping zits, or arguing the finer points of bra size, but we’re not. We’re older. We are supposed to be wiser, cooler, and less dumb-ass-er.
Yet, here I am, on a Friday night, proclaiming to my dear friend that it was me, I am the one, who came up with “ass and feet,” not my friend. She insists it was her.
So, good. Ass, feet, and arm pits, that’s better. Better than everything else that has been on my mind.
Smell on my fabulous friends.
Go team!
We’re now both convinced that ass and feet is the smell winner, yet we are not convinced on who first decided that is what belly lint stinks like.
Let me point out that we might as well be 16 years old, or just going through puberty, popping zits, or arguing the finer points of bra size, but we’re not. We’re older. We are supposed to be wiser, cooler, and less dumb-ass-er.
Yet, here I am, on a Friday night, proclaiming to my dear friend that it was me, I am the one, who came up with “ass and feet,” not my friend. She insists it was her.
So, good. Ass, feet, and arm pits, that’s better. Better than everything else that has been on my mind.
Smell on my fabulous friends.
Go team!
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