|
|
not standing up for myself. feeling sick and miserable but trying to handle it "patiently" and like a "good girl." my land, celeste. not screaming enough. not insisting that i needn't suffer anymore. than an answer be found. moreover, not insisting on how much it hurt. how broken my heart was. how traumatized i felt by losing my health and energy. losing my voice. trying way too hard to appear normal to everyone else. squashing down the hurt and the fear. feeling angry for everyone's apathy and wish for my good health. wanting to mourn, but feeling ashamed. wanting to hurt out-loud, but feeling disgusting for all my pain. wishing i just had my "shit together" and tight abs like everyone else seemed to. squeezing the hurt tightly in my throat. swollen lymph. forever infections. exhausted adrenals. and, eventually, low thyroid function. off the charts. somehow i wound my way here over the past 4 years. thinking i was doing everything i could. thinking i was processing as i should. but it's the subtle and most profound and powerful messages i was giving myself that over time spoke the loudest. i didn't know how to love myself enough, despite my sickness and weakness, to honor what i really felt about all this. the sort of concentration-camp horror i held in my heart for my losses and sacrifices. instead, i desperately wanted to stay positive. i thought staying optimistic would be the best cure-all. otherwise, i reasoned, you get depressed and stuck and believe all sorts of lies about yourself. look at my sister. i thought it was one way or the other. depressed and stuck and ill forever OR happy and optimistic and changing for the better. i didn't know then what i'm just STARTing to understand now: it doesn't matter what you seem to be doing on the OUTSIDE: all the walks and talks and tears and herbs and appointments and discipline and sacrifices... If it's cruel and without compassion, on some level, on the INSIDE, then you're just poisoning yourself. digging a deeper hole. adding more layers. further hiding from the truth. and the truth is, i totally freaked out that i could become so sick and vulnerable. and i began to dread teaching yoga: i could hardly do what i was teaching, and i had nothing emotionally, physically, or energetically left to give. i would leave class with a fever, headache, dark eyes, and a bitter heart. this was yoga, after all, and it meant the world to me. i missed it desperately and needed its healing powers. i had no room to give it or me out. gradually this comparison of who i was and what i could do compared to who i became and how rotten i felt made me bitter and angry. but still i tried to give up more and more of my passions, more and more of my favorite things, to become well. which was fine, on some level. i was releasing all that wasn't necessary to focus on what was. and besides, i am not any of those identities. i am so much more. and i had to find that out for myself, after losing them. which was a great gift. still, i did not let myself really get clear that i didn't want to be sick anymore, and that that was okay. i wanted it to end, and that was okay. instead, i placed myself on the sacrificial alter, piously pretending that it didn't hurt and that i didn't hate it. not all of it, mind you. i learned how to rest in ways i never could have. i learned to enjoy the subtle, quiet things that never used to draw my attention, except maybe as a littler girl. i learned to enjoy the simple pleasures. i learned to appreciate nature in a way that only a person starved for it can. i learned to enjoy slowing things down a notch or two. BUT i did hate a lot, too. i'm not a big home-bound type, and i spent most of my life indoors. i gave up running, strong walking, biking, every bit of yoga asana except the most restorative, rollerblading, working, generating income, traveling, keeping a clean apartment, shopping, playing with scott, socializing, singing my head off, playing guitar, and on and on. it's true, though, that i gained many things as well, for which i'll be forever grateful. but i believe i let that gratitude for the graces of god and the good aspects of this whole thing cloud the reality that i woke up each day, realized how rotten i still felt, and immediately felt punched in the gut, overwhelmed with disappointment, rage, and fear. sometimes i even felt hopeless. which, of course, scared the crap out of me. so i'd jump out of that mood as quickly as i could. for which scott and everyone were grateful. but not so much anymore. scott has learned the value of honoring what i really feel and what i really have to say. that's the only way to have a real and happy phersty, he'd say. but we, both of us, didn't believe that then. it was happy phersty at all costs. look to the positive at all costs. quiet the tears. hush the hurt. tell the anger it's bad and should just go away. it has taken us many years to realize that my natural responses to things ARE the way i should be handling it in that moment. to let those emotions have their moment, and then let them go. to let them be temporary, rather than permanent fictures in my deepest heart and mind. it's almost funny now to see the difference. scott and i have dramatically reduced our fear of emotions. they have very little power over us; we let them come, let them out, realize they are natural, realize we are not our emotions, but that they're just something we're passing through, like the experience that triggered them itself. we have a much harder time squashing them, and when they come, we are always surprised by how impotent they are in the long run, for we don't see them as true or good/bad, right/wrong. they're just doing what they do best. and the mind, it's just doing what it does best: babble to itself in circles, generating the same stories over and over again. the truth is, i took a wrong turn somewhere(as Carolin said). and i had a lot of stuff building up from my childhood and adolescence. stuff i had no idea was there nor did i know how to deal with any of its residues and echoes haunting my "normal" life. and then when my body started to crumble beneath me, started to reveal weakness after weakness, compromise after compromise, i felt totally horrified and angry. angry at myself, mostly. and so then i pushed and pushed, determined to make my healthy body come back. determined that this would be short-lived and that there was NO WAY i could live my life with so many physical problems. i tried to grow emotionally. i tried to be patient. i tried to positively work out solutions for myself. and i did learn. suffering brings change and growth whether you like it or not. i guess what i'm learning is that nothing natural, including me or my body, responds for very long to force. not without consequences anyway. i need just as much compassion as i'd give anything else alive. for too many years i was told to stop crying. i, of course, thought i was bad and that crying was bad. i didn't realize that these people were just afraid. i internalized all these orders to grin and bear it, to keep a stiff upper lip, to focus on the positive, to pull myself together, blah blah blah and on and on. i internalized these so well that i created my own little internal dictator to fulfill that most important role for me. well, i see you now, little dictator. you've been hanging out a long while here, so you should know that i'm pretty damn powerful. if i believe it, i make it happen. so you should be feeling a tad insecure right about now, knowing you're exposed to me. i know you now. that should make you tremble enough to start keeping your eyes open for another job somewhere else. maybe in someone else's brain. the truth is... [2007-01-07]
Navigation newest letter | older letters
Last five letters Gathering [2009-09-04] ?2002, Scott & Celeste. |