Not just relief…but a cure

Loneliness is not cured by human company.

 Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.

People don’t really want to be cured.

What they want is relief; a cure is painful.

Anthony de Mello

I’ve been wondering what is going on with me lately.  I’ve been wondering if maybe I’m depressed.  I don’t have much energy.  Doing anything at all feels like trying to move through water.  It is hard to get excited about anything much at all.

I didn’t really notice how down I’ve been until I awoke the other day in a good mood.  I wasn’t hurting, wasn’t nauseous or sick and had energy.  I’d kind of forgotten how good it feels to feel good.  Tammy was really happy to see me feeling so well.  That’s when I realized I had been feeling sick for months.  And it was wearing on me.  Unfortunately, my energy and healthy feeling only lasted a couple of hours.

This week I haven’t been able to stop crying.  I keep crying over things that really aren’t that big a deal.  But everything seems big to me right now.  Everything seems hard.  And unfair.  Like the odds are stacked against me and I don’t have a chance at all.  I keep telling myself that these are just feelings, that they will pass, that they aren’t real…but it really isn’t helping much just yet.

I realized that I’ve been kind of down since I didn’t get to move as planned this spring.  Stuck in Florida for another summer.  Now I’m wondering if I need to get meds.  I’ve never taken meds when I’ve been down in the past.  It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this dark.  I was putting the dishes away yesterday and found myself caressing the big knife, imagining plunging it into my chest and all the trouble and pain of life being done.  Not that I ever would do that.  I wouldn’t do that to my kids or to Tammy.  But just realizing how I was thinking kind of freaked me out a bit.

The last two days I’ve been trying to sign up for school.  I’m proud as hell of Tam for starting next week.  She applied for Pell Grant for me awhile back, but I wanted to wait till after moving to start school.  Then I realized that going to school would help me get my energy and happiness back…just to get out of the house and interact with people and be interested in something.  But I keep running into walls, over and over, and it looks like I won’t be able to get signed up in time to start back to school this fall.  Which just makes me sadder than if I’d never tried.  Ah well.  This post is starting to depress me.

What I started out to say is this:  maybe what is happening is that I am doing this inner work (through meditation and mindfulness practice) and maybe the pain I am feeling has to do with that.  I kind of hope so, in that at least it would serve a purpose.  Not just random depression and darkness, but an experiencing of the darkness in order to be cured. 

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full ~ Marcel Proust

Feeling alone

Sometimes I feel so out of sync with the rest of the world.  I know it’s because of the 20 years I spent in church.  It’s not just that I don’t know what people are talking about when they reference music or movies.  It’s more than that.  It’s that the first 15 years I spent after leaving home I was one way, then for the next 20 I was radically different, now for the last 4 or  I’ve been radically different again.  The thing is, for the first 15 I knew where I stood.  I had very little self-awareness, but I fit into a people group…hippie, stoner, atheist, activist, mother-earth, etc.  Then for the next 20 I was christian, part of the club, seeker, pray-er, worshipper, studier of the bible, note-taker at sermons and conferences, mentor, leader, teacher. 

But what am I now?  What group am I a part of?  I don’t know many old ex-hippie recovering fundamentalist lesbian buddhists.  I don’t know anyone who shares my experiences and that feels lonely.

I am slowly becoming more comfortable with the “not-knowing” place I am in spiritually.  And I am slowly getting more accepting of the messiness that is me.  I don’t hide from my ugliness like I used to and I can see and appreciate the beauty in who I am more than I did.  So that is good, I suppose.  I don’t feel lost.  I don’t feel I am in a bad place.  Just a place where I am becoming comfortable with having left the shore in this little boat, without much of a clue as to where I am going or where the land even is, anymore.  It feels okay.  It feels right.

When I begin to feel sad about the twists and turns of my life, how long it has taken me to get to this place of authenticity, I remember something I read:

Whether success or failure: the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality.  The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight.  The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.  (May Sarton)

And this:

The reward for attention is healing.  Ultimately, it is the pain of being alone that is healed as attention is an act of connection.  (Shakti Gawain)

Tears and brownies

The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. ~ Pema Chodrom 

 I want to accomplish a big shift in my relationship to my difficult memories.  Life is conspiring to free me from the compulsion to anchor my sense of self in my pain.  Part of that is honestly facing some of these memories head on, without censoring or dressing up the ugly parts.  This can be hard work.  My weekend was a little rough because I couldn’t seem to quit crying.  Tammy was good to me, as usual.  She just held me and let me cry.  She made me dinner and brought me a brownie afterword.  What more could I ask for?

Transmigration into another soul

Life is funny sometimes. The way it takes hard things to grow, adversity to gain strength, hardship to learn appreciation for small goodnesses.

I’ve noticed this thing women do. You see it when there is a round of flu or virus milling about. Her family will get sick, she’ll minister to them until they’re well or nearly well and then fall victim to the illness. Or there will be a family emergency and she will sail through with composure only to fall into pieces after the crisis has passed.

I had a similar experience tonight. Tam and I were sitting idly at the kitchen table, talking of this and that, as we seem to do so often. We were daydreaming of the places we’d travel to if we were rich, beginning to the places in Europe we’d love to experience, then on to this country from an RV. I mused that this kind of daydreaming was more fun when younger and the possibilities of them coming true holds more hope.

I began to feel a sadness. Tam got up to tend to something, but as usual, reading my mood, she tarried for a hug. I need to explain about Tammy’s hugs. She refers to herself sometimes as a “big kid”, as in wondering if a place has tables instead of booths for big kids. She is big, beautiful and strong. Her heart, especially. Her arms are big and when she holds me they surround me softly like velvet steel. I feel safe. Her hugs hold such love. Tonight, as her arms enfolded me and I sank my head into her soft chest, I felt the full force of sadness strike.

I’ve learned not to hide when moments like this happen. In the past, I would have scolded myself internally for being silly, or for being sad over nothing. Instead, I rode the wave and waited to see where it would take me. This I was able to do partly due to learning to listen more carefully to my truer self instead of the inner critic and partly due to the warm, soft safety of Tammy’s arms.

It was then that I realized that it was only now, safely engulfed in her arms and love that I could let myself feel the sadness of my life. By that, I mean the way I’ve lived in a survival mode, keeping myself going, keeping my children and I safe but losing the wider, freer life I longed for. Thinking of how I’d always loved to move about as a young woman and how that was curtailed after the second and then third child. How I became trapped, or at least felt trapped, here in Florida for 30 years…with the last 20 being unwilling of soul to be here. Yet I stayed, kept first by poverty and then by an unwillingness to separate child from parent.

But it’s not just the living here for so long. It’s also the dreams that got put on a back burner to the more urgent tyranny of parenthood and survival. Things I’d thought I’d do that I realize now I will never experience directly. And a life lived without the fullness of relationship I now am so happy to have with Tammy. I’m not sure how to put it into words, really.

I guess I just felt the sadness of a life not lived to its potential. A life where too much of myself was sacrificed. A life constrained, a life lived partly.

It struck me as interesting that I was able to experience the full sorrow of my disappointment with my life only now, sheltered in this place of safety, as I felt myself entering into honesty on a level I was unaccustomed to in the past. I felt a familiar tug as I realized I was to be learning something here.

To truly begin a new life, the old one must be killed. To begin a new thing, the old must be destroyed. For me to live fully in this moment, I needed to face how muted my living had been in the past. Face it, look at it and determine where my fear had held me, where my own insecurity or lack of courage had enabled my entrapment.
Tammy held me for long moments. I held back my tears. She is so great, guys. When she asked me what it was and I wasn’t able to tell her, she let that be alright. She made sure I was okay, that I couldn’t talk about it right now, then left me alone to sort my thoughts. Just one of the hundreds of ways she shows how wonderful she is to me every day.How many times have we heard that it helps in the grief process to have a funeral or memorial, to have something concrete to commemorate the passing of a person from this earth? I think it is the same with us as we pass into new territory on our life’s journey. Sometimes we need a reminder to look on the old life, to look at it squarely and honestly and say good bye. Maybe it’s only then we can turn ahead and forge forward without the turning back that can waylay us and cause us to run off the path or become stalled.

So whether it is mourning the passing of a marriage or the passing of a season of life…Whether it be sadness over a life lived less than honestly or passionately or the tender farewell of good things that have now come to an end, saying good bye is a necessary step in the process of forward motion. It’s only then that we can come to the happy place of being prepared to engage in what Ortega called the highest form of civilized sport: the transmigration into another soul.

Rebuilding

Remember the old librarian from The Shawshank Redemption? The one who couldn’t handle being out after years and years in prison, so he hung himself? Well, I think I know a little of how he felt.

After almost 20 years of being firmly entrenched in a church bubble and almost 50 years of living as a hetero, I sometimes feel completely out of touch and lost. The littlest thing will happen and I will think to myself, “Now, how do I feel about that? What do I think about that?” So much of how I was trained to think while in church is moot now. And living as a lesbian is quite a bit different than as a straight girl.

For years and years I didn’t watch any movie rated “R” or listen to “secular” music. I missed so much!! People reference movies or albums and I don’t have a clue. It gets frustrating at times. But more than that, what bugs me is the automatic guilt reflex. I’ll be going along, enjoying some sweet sex with Tammy or listening to a new CD or watching some Six Feet Under (one of the series I missed — and I’m hooked), when I start to struggle with guilt feelings. It drives me bananas! I’ll have to stop for a minute, remind myself that all is well and life is for living. Geez.

I sometimes feel like I’m incomplete. Like a partially formed fetus that hasn’t finished growing into a full-fledged infant. I spent several years in deconstruction and now I am in the process of rebuilding. It’s fun and exciting, yes, but also frustrating to be so ill formed. I’m impatient. I’m like the moon was last night. It looked full at first, until closer examination revealed it to be missing the tiniest sliver. I’m missing a piece here and a piece there. Ah well. It will take a little time, I suppose, for me to feel complete. I comfort myself with the knowledge that the me that is being formed right now is the truest me.

Never Can Say Goodbye

If I were asked to name the one bane of my existence, the most oft occurring stumbling block, the best known pain, the recurring heartache of my life, I would instantly know. Separation. Since I was a child I’ve suffered over this unfailing fact of life. We lose what we love. We get separated from people, things, and places that hold our heart in their grip, ripping it out, piece by piece.In my friendships, I’ve never known anyone else to suffer as I do in this area. It’s something I’ve been aware of, recognizing the ache, the slide into depression, the struggle to find some meaning that will tip the scale and grant me a reason to live and love just to lose again.

The fourth of The Five Remembrances is this: “All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them”. Thinking and meditating on this has begun to bring a change in me. I’m thankful for that. I’ve begun the process of letting go, of releasing my grip.

Visiting Mom in Georgia was incredibly healing. We had fun and spent lots of everyday time, just sitting together, going shopping and such. I felt freer to enjoy her presence than ever before. I think the processing of the fear and hatred of separation really freed me to just be in the moment with her.

You see, I lost her when just a toddler. She and my father had been having problems. My dad’s parents – specifically my grandmother – had been interfering, not helping a bit. There were three of us kids, Rick – 6, me -2, and Sheila just a babe. My Mom went to Indiana for the weekend to help her sister who was in crisis and came home to a nightmare.

We were gone. All of our things whisked away with us, no trace to be found. No time to say goodbye. No warning. Dad came in, explained we were at his parents, explained how much better of a chance we would have there to be properly cared for, educated and such. Grandma had provided an airplane ticket back to Indiana. Dad drove Mom to the airport. She was blindsided, numb, in shock. She wept all the way to the airport, all the way to Indiana.

How could she have been talked so easily out of her children, you ask? Return to the 1950’s with me. Remember the powerlessness of a woman alone. Before welfare, before child support. Look on the frightened, poor woman working as a waitress. Imagine being her.

Imagine trying to care for three children alone. Then listen to the arguments. It’s better for the children. You can’t do it alone. They would suffer. Feel your emotional brokenness, your low self image.Then follow the next few years. Too far to drive your clunker to visit. Too poor to afford the train very often. Resistance from every side to your visits. Finally, an episode after a visit where how upsetting it was for you to leave was turned inside out into how upsetting it was for you to come and given back to you as a rebuke. If you loved them, you wouldn’t hurt them like this.

Stay inside her a little longer. You remarry. You spend countless nights weeping over the lost children. Then you get pregnant. Afraid to hope, afraid to love and lose. Then it happens. You miscarry the child. Imagine the devastation. Then imagine miscarrying 6 more times.

When you begin your 8th pregnancy since losing your first three children, you don’t dream that carrying this one to term would be worse. Then you have trouble sleeping and your doctor gives you Thalidomide. You trust him, he’s your doctor.

The child is born. Born after a normal labor. But something is wrong. The small child isn’t crying. You call out for her, beg to know what is happening. Hushed voices. The nurse’s thoughtless words. It’s better it didn’t live. The deformity. Don’t look. Let her go without looking.

You begin to believe you are cursed. God is punishing you for losing your first three children. It’s years before you find out is was the sleeping pills, not God’s judgment.

All this time, I was broken. Something wrong inside my soul. My heart with a hole in it. Can’t talk about it, though. It’s not to be spoken of. Never to be brought up. No questions allowed, no answers offered. All those nights, wondering. Laying awake. Trying to imagine her. Where she was, what she looked like. Why she left me. What was wrong with me. Needing her.Its been only recently that I’ve come to realize that my issues with separation come from the dark seed planted the day Mom came home to an empty apartment. Hearing her story helps. Meditating on the inevitability of separation in all of our lives helps.

But mostly, knowing her now helps. Seeing how much we’re alike. Hearing others wonder at the way our voices sound alike. Having others notice our silvery hair and comment on its similar beauty. Listening to her share her mind and recognizing my own mind in it. Delighting in the kinship of a fellow rebel. Laughing at her stubbornness, wondering at her lack of self-pity. Perhaps most of all, being astonished at her will to survive, her spine of steel that refused to bend, to break or to shatter.

Women, we are amazing. We can bear so much and keep on living. We can lose so much and keep on loving.

Let me say one more thing. My Mother’s love has been a balm to my brokenness. Her unwavering, unspoken-yet-loud-and-clear complete acceptance. I’m proud to have sprung from her womb. Fiercely proud to be her daughter. She is an amazing, unique and unstoppable woman. I love you, Mom.