Well.
Well, well...well.
I don't know if this is a woman thing, or a crazy person thing or a me thing...but apparently I have inexplicably "lost it" again.
(Whatever the hell "it" is.)
I am hoping that maybe - just maybe - if I kind of outline it all right here then I will feel slightly less mad and start trending towards general feelings of peace and happiness towards myself again.
Work has been insane, bizarre, stressful, trying, infuriating, disgusting, challenging, and stressful...did I mention stressful?
Last Tuesday all of the crap of work somehow materialized into this intense and piercing pain in my left neck and shoulder. I tried to calm down and work it out...and then Wednesday morning my left side felt fine - but the pain shifted to my right side with a vengeance. Wednesday and Thursday were miserable with pain. Friday it was still bothering me...
Friday I had a work meeting thing that ended up with actually learning about 2 other job opportunities that are going to be posted in about 7 or 8 months and they wanted to know my interest. I found this interesting - and unexpected. Since I wasn't looking at this as a possible job for the future kind of meeting, I think I was a little off balance and silly with my responses. Plus, one of the positions would be doing something that I swore I would never do (plus it would be highly political and stressful - very stressful - very powerful people would be pissed off with me on a fairly regular basis) and the other is in an area that I always found fascinating but wonder if I would be the best candidate (it seems like there are others with way more technical training that would be a better fit than me - and like an idiot I actually communicated this...something like "I would love that, but my learning curve would be pretty steep...").
However, this could be very cool. This would mean moving closer to the coast. Closer to the area that I keep wanting to live...I think. I don't know. It was all just very unexpected.
Plus, it was one of those meetings where people seem to find you "impressive" which always unnerves me afterwards because I feel fundamentally unimpressive at my core so I feel odd when I leave those kind of moments. Again - off balance...just off balance...
By Friday night I wasn't able to sleep...the pain in my shoulder and neck was throbbing and I was very confused about life and opportunities or lack of opportunities and new choices and [sigh] life.
Saturday morning - woke up, out of town, and the studio where I wanted to go for yoga this weekend was closed for teacher training. Boo. As a result, I ended up at the local community center for yoga. God love the local community center yoga classes - they are always such a mixed bag!
This Saturday the instructor decided to lead a flow focusing on relieving stress and tension in the upper back and shoulders. Thank you, Universe! I say, "namaste" to the fabric of time and space for that little intervention.
The closing meditation was amazing. She borrowed a visualisation from An Imaginary Life that still when I think back to those moments touch me profoundly.
I felt better.
Then as the day goes forward my neck and shoulder just start to freeze up again. Bad.
By 7 that evening, I made an emergency appointment at the spa down the street with the massage therapist because the pain is just too much.
The good news: the tension and pain in my shoulder and neck was relieved.
The bad news: I had this horrible overwhelming awareness that my fundamental issue is this deep aching pain of a sense that I/my body/my mind betrayed me - and I am real pissed off about that - real pissy indeed!
Somewhere during the night while I slept the initial emotional high of "yeah! my neck is not killing me" became replaced with deep dark anger...and I am guessing that because turning really ugly anger on yourself triggers some type of emotional stop-gap measure that results in said anger going outwards instead of inwards.
So Sunday - I was bitchy. But trying or maybe "trying" (depending on who you ask) to not be anger towards the very people I hold the closest to me, but it was just fucking sitting there...and I was snap, snap, snappy, cranky girl.
Awesome.
I would try to pull out of it...then nose dive right back into it.
Ultimately, alienating my husband who was tired of me being mean...which just made the whole angry doom spiral even worse because then I felt isolated and alone and alone and alone and alone in more and more anger.
I wish I could say that I slept off the anger. But - nope. Woke up with it.
Still pissed off and broken hearted.
This just sucks.
I should not be upset. I should be happy. I should be positive. I should be motivated.
Yet, I feel like the fattest man in the entire world has sat on my chest, deflated all possible air out of my lungs and rudely farted in my face.
See - how dramatic.
This sucks.
Because it is truly nothing - and it feels like everything...
and I am trying to figure out how to be a better person at a time when all I really want to do is dive into a deep cave and never speak to another living soul again...
because that would be substantially less embarrassing than being me.
See - unimpressive.
So this is life...or at least my life.
I drag my ass into a shower and come into work to deal with the trials and tribulations of the work day.
I skate on the surface of every moment and interaction just thinking "oh god, I just want to go back to freaking bed!"
See - unimpressive.
I know that you are not supposed to talk about these things. That it is alienating to be the nut job blogger and I should be more careful about it...
but, fuck, fuck, fuck.
So, in my desperation I plan on doing the only thing that might possibly pull me the hell out of this...although I must confess I am feeling quite fundamentally broken right now. (Could I be more annoying? - for the love!)
N.V. Raghuram says,
"Everyone comes to yoga because of some kind of suffering."
So I will take my self-inflicted suffering self to yoga in about 30 minutes - I will be face down on a mat and alone with myself again...fuck...[sigh].
When I went in for my massage, the guy asked me what I thought was the problem, and I looked at him all stiff-necked and glassy-eyed and whispered,
"you might think I am crazy or silly, but I think it is my heart chakra..."
Little did I know that this guy was also a Reiki practitioner.
So he did a combination of Reiki and massage to fix my shoulder...and now my stomach is all a flip-flop.
All a flip-flop.
Damn you, belly!
Off I go to the Monday evening beginner yoga class tonight
and I need to change.
(Literally and Metaphorically)
Maybe this will be the path out of this today...
but what if this just continues because there is something here that I am not dealing with appropriately and I never figure it out and I am just a queen bitch on Sundays because I am stressed and pissy; and I never resolve this inner anger thing and end up hurting all the people I want to lift up!
What if I just always end up being this asshole who is simply aware of being an asshole!
That is not much of an enlightenment.
Okay, so off I go to the yoga class...
and in my mind I am thinking about Reiki teachings and wondering if the world is big and expansive enough to fix all this and fix me:
The secret method of inviting good fortune.
The marvelous medicine for all sickness
Just for today:
Do not be angry
Do not worry
Be grateful
Work with integrity
Be kind to others and to yourself.
Every morning and every night, sit in the Gassho position [hands held palm-to-palm] and speak these words out loud in your heart.
For the evolution of body and soul, Usui Reiki Ryoho"
— Mikao Usui
[long deep sigh - again]
Friday Funny 2441: Parenting Funnies
1 year ago
6 comments:
Oh dear heart. You are here. now. that's it. no shoulds. there are no shoulds. you wrote 'should' so many times.
it's a cycle - womanish? maybe.
you are beautiful.
you are divine.
how many gods are there in the indian pantheon?
being angry, hurt, humbled
doesn't make you less god like
the anger will lift
don't make it worse by being angry at the anger.
your husband understands
we understand
we have all been there
it's called being human
and beautiful
only the callous and the ugly
refuse anger
want only - nice, happy, peaceful
that's no life
be angry
soon you will be something else
i'm with you
i have nothing so poetic or inspirational or lyric to say.
only that i have been there, where you are - and too often.
the only truth about it is that it doesn't last forever. you will come out of it. and probably there is a reason to be in it.
maybe don't wish it away until it's done doing what it needs to do with you?
Oh, f, I hope you are feeling better. I don't know if this is way off base, or if you have time for it, but I find that volunteering makes me smile inside. I haven't been able to since IM training, but J and I used to go to the shelter once a week as "cat cuddlers" -- playing with the cats, socializing them, and the best part - finding them loving homes.
Oh, sweet girl. Your post made me groan aloud, because it is so difficult to see someone so lovely who is in denial -- fundamental denial -- of their core fabulousness. Everyone feels fundamentally flawed, although your idea of just being an asshole who cultivates fabulous awareness of it made me laugh out loud.
I know very few things, but one of them might be that we cannot make ourselves be better people. We can't. It's wrong thinking. If we move toward accepting our perfection, then the underlying fear and white-knuckled grasping and gasping will abate and we can move through our days from our true cores, which is light. No one's true core is angriness or madness, even when it really feels that way. So when we try to Not be Angry or think, I must be a better person, all it means is moving through the day trying to control our thoughts or our "inner anger" and it leaves us contracted and exhausted and sad.
You wrote that your heart was broken. I think that's the ... shoot. Crying a little now, but I think that's the core of everyone's EVER straying from their center. Our hearts get broken, and we get scared, and we act jerky.
The woman whom I consider to be my teacher, Tara Brach, focuses so much of her teachings on the idea that we move toward our true perfection, toward "home," by being gentle to ourselves. (She wrote a book, Radical Acceptance, which was so helpful to me.) I always felt like, naaah. I'll be gentle with myself when I deserve it a little more -- right now, I'm a serious fuckup in need of some hammering and criticism and some self improvement! But when I did accept even a little bit of what she's (always, always) talking about, I loosened. ANd then a little more, I loosened. And then you move toward your center just a little bit. And then one day I thought, hey, I'm not SO much of a big jerk ALL the TIME these days. (I consider this a victory.)
And so it goes.
If you are ever interested (and there are a bazillion people who have some clever advice and I don't want to be anything pushy or ... whatever.) If you're curious, she has free podcasts on itunes. I listen in the car, folding the laundry, etc. It helps me to refocus, just for a few conscious breaths here and there throughout the day.
I'm glad you sat still with your broken heart. And for whatever it's worth, a world of happy posts is fun in its own way but not very illuminating, and last week when I commented that long ridiculous thing on your blog I was ashamed in part because I was TRULY under the impression that not one other mamma I know has ever lost her temper with her child.
I'm not brave enough to post like you. Thank you.
"What if I just always end up being this asshole who is simply aware of being an asshole!"
Do what I do. Revel in it, embrace it. Don't fight those feelings. We'll all love you anyway.
I know I am so late to the game on this, but just wanted to let you know you are not alone. There are parts of this post that I wanted to jump up and scream, "I know what you mean! I feel the same way!" No answers. No words of wisdom. Just a friend sharing your angst and letting you know you aren't alone...
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