Monthly Archives: February 2013

pulling weeds and planting flowers

Few peo­ple have been able to fill the void late­ly. The ones who do sing to me the unashamed­ly erot­ic songs of John Dowland and help me test new decks.

Through it all, I’ve been try­ing to take five breaths every now and then, inhal­ing and exhal­ing a lit­tle more ful­ly than usu­al. Trying not to live like it’s a fri­day every day. Trying to fig­ure out if I should apol­o­gize for using your song to score the moments I shared with some­one else. Trying to rec­on­cile my old Taoist beliefs with my new Buddhist views. Trying to be hap­py with the per­son I am, instead of let­ting dis­con­tent dri­ve self-improve­ment.

house in the woods

 

Frigid win­ter days are teach­ing me patience and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Some are eas­i­er than oth­ers. I’ve been work­ing with the fick­le swings instead of against them. Otherwise, it’s a con­stant strug­gle when try­ing to impose sta­t­ic order on inher­ent­ly unsta­ble process­es. The hard part is mak­ing plans when you don’t know how you’ll feel from one day to the next.

Jesse arranges

Back in the day when we were doing cov­ers of Frank Ocean songs. One of the most rec­og­niz­able things about Jesse’s room are instru­ments strewn about.

The great­est test of my progress so far will be an acoustic show Jesse asked me to play with him on Sunday. Anxiety has been get­ting the bet­ter of me late­ly, and the prospect of hav­ing only two nights of rehearsal does noth­ing to assuage this.

I’ve been keep­ing in mind that we were able to pull off a decent per­for­mance last time when I did­n’t know the show was going to hap­pen until a few hours pri­or; one of those exer­cis­es to fos­ter pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences and com­bat neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias. Fortunately, Jesse is a great front­man to be behind, cause he com­mands the atten­tion of any­one watch­ing, also tak­ing the atten­tion away from ner­vous fin­gers and live jit­ters.

cat and girl

 

The jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery has been dif­fi­cult. When there’s a his­to­ry of trau­ma, it’s inevitable that an uncom­fort­able feel­ings get stirred up every now and then. I take care of myself by mak­ing sure I see the impor­tant peo­ple on a con­sis­tent basis and liv­ing in those moments. The lit­tle ways to heal are found in both the expe­ri­ences them­selves and the time one takes to inter­nal­ize those expe­ri­ences.

This is how I learn that self-com­pas­sion isn’t self-pity, and that most peo­ple bring less kind­ness to them­selves than to oth­ers. To get on my own side, I’ve been visu­al­iz­ing myself as a child, just as wor­thy of care as any oth­er. I would wish the best for that lit­tle per­son, and it helps me under­stand that I should wish the best for myself as well.

the edge of a waterfall

There’s so much hap­pen­ing at once that it makes my head spin. Sometimes I won­der what it’d be like to be the one writ­ten about, to be on the oth­er side of that lens. What would anoth­er per­son say about me? Would it be dif­fer­ent from what I think of myself? And would I like what was said?

I haven’t been able to write, not from a lack of time or desire, but because I can’t keep a straight thought for long enough to get it on a page. Even when I can get myself to sit down for an hour, I just end up in an end­less cycle of inspired writ­ing and crit­i­cal revi­sions. I’ve been ques­tion­ing every­thing. I don’t know what I’m work­ing towards, where I’m going to end up, or even what I want any­more. It’s easy to get over­whelmed by it all, so I have to remind myself to take every­thing one day at a time.

It’s no longer about resolv­ing strug­gles and learn­ing to grow, it’s about fun­da­men­tal changes in the per­son I am and the way I define myself. When you’re unsure of who you are, noth­ing in the world seems sta­ble. Maybe that’s why the good doc­tor asked me if I was scared of chang­ing. I told him yes, but only because I don’t know if the per­son I am now would like the per­son I’ll be lat­er.

tin cans and string for years

Man can­not remake him­self with­out suf­fer­ing, for he is both the mar­ble and the sculp­tor.

—Alexis Carrel

I’ve been dis­cov­er­ing that I don’t know how to take care of myself. Not in a prac­ti­cal, every­day sense, but a cog­ni­tive one. Consistent psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse dur­ing my for­ma­tive years meant I nev­er had the chance to devel­op some impor­tant life skills, like how to nur­ture my emo­tion­al needs, how to make mis­takes, and how to view myself with­out judg­ment. The poi­son was in the wound, you see, and the wound would­n’t heal.

So far I’ve just start­ed rec­og­niz­ing these issues in ther­a­py, and it all makes me feel dam­aged and defec­tive, like­ly why I’ve been hid­ing these parts of my life from oth­ers for so long. But I’ve been hid­ing them from myself most of all. It’s hard to go through the painful but nec­es­sary process of griev­ing when I’m alone; always eas­i­er to ignore things and keep going.

I asked Tiana to help me through this, cause now I know I can’t do it by myself. It was­n’t easy. Even the sim­ple idea of ask­ing for help makes me anx­ious. People who’ve had major roles in my life have hurt me or let me down in a very sig­nif­i­cant way, so trust­ing oth­ers has always been hard, and I’ve avoid­ed being vul­ner­a­ble for so long because of that.

Luckily, Tiana respond­ed the way I need­ed her to, and it’s been a great com­fort to give myself up to some­one I can trust. To be able to cry in front of a per­son with­out feel­ing guilty about my emo­tions or how I’m mak­ing them feel. To be able to talk to some­one who’s recep­tive and atten­tive and gen­tle and car­ing and appre­ci­ates my open­ness as well. To be the lit­tle spoon, cause every­one needs to be held some­times. She lets me let go, and for the first time, I’ve been able to sur­ren­der myself ful­ly and still believe that I’ll be okay. I can sigh with relief instead of sad­ness.

These are still baby steps though, and the whole process is ter­ri­fy­ing. My sense of con­trol is what makes me feel safe, even if it’s detri­men­tal to my growth, and I’m still learn­ing how to give that up. But I tell myself it’s progress nonethe­less, which is what I need now.