Resurfacing

So. It has been many months and much has transpired since I last wrote an entry.  I have recovered from shoulder surgery in January. I ended my 29-year professional career in May...at least for a while. My step-dad died, bringing closure the horror that was my childhood (and that now I can finally write about). I have reconnected with long-lost "family," both blood and chosen.  I came back to yoga. And I spent the past four months in discomfort, trying to adapt to a state of dependency that I have resisted most of my 51 years. I am slowly softening around the resistance, but it is a difficult journey to healing.

The people who are closest to me know that I have been uncharacteristically emotional.  I cry now, pretty regularly.  I feel now, since I am not blocking my feelings through activity. And I have slowed down to a point that I worry about my brain getting mushy.  One of my best friends has told me that my inactivity is allowing me to do all of my emotional processing.  My therapist reminds me that I don't need to base my self worth on what I accomplish. And I have been trying to live an observe in this place that is new. And frightening. In my mind I see my mother, sitting in a chair, all day, every day, with the TV on and the lights turned low. I am not my mother, but I have always feared becoming her. Rationally, I know that can't happen. Emotionally, I force back the urge to actively resist by zooming around and filling my days with things to do. I am hopeful to find balance at some point.

When I started this blog, I had had an epiphany and given myself a year to get out of my toxic work situation.  And as of August 2012, I had done that and eased myself back into academia where I have always felt most comfortable.  However, even though on the surface nothing had changed much, everything was different. And I was no longer in a position to be a change agent.  I recognized that donning my professor hat again was only temporary, but I also realized that occupying a position where I could see with the perspective of an outsider brought me much frustration.  I simply couldn't do anything to improve the issues I saw as problematic. And the inability to have a voice or drive change echoed the place I had just left.  Another light bulb went on.  Sometimes recognizing your essential life needs only happens when they are absent. 

After a very interesting discussion recently with one of my best friends, an amazing astrologist, we shed some light on a part of my natal chart that had always been confusing for us.  I have a planet in a certain house that indicates "a life half-lived." From the outside, this didn't make sense, because I have achieved a great deal of success, both professionally and personally.  However, I have always known that something was missing. I have had an artistic hunger that surfaces regularly, and is reflected in the creative endeavors in which I have dabbled over the years.  But it has always been overshadowed by my drive for external accomplishment and acknowledgement and thwarted by the Gemini energy that causes me to bounce from interest to interest without ever staying long enough with one thing to see where it might take me. Since I have freed up my time and my life from those external constraints, I have opened space to let that artist out.  And, if I truly want to soften around resistance, I need to allow myself the opportunity to explore all of those different avenues of artistry in which I have taken an interest--writing, music, dance, drawing and painting, jewelry making, sewing and fiber work, and even the home arts of cooking and baking and decorating--without judgment. 

I have a house full of materials I have collected over the years and a head full of ideas I want to try out. Now I just need two things, both of which I will have to give myself.  The first is structure.  I know I am project-oriented and work best when I have a schedule and some kind of a deadline or deliverable.  So, I am scheduling classes to keep me focused and intend to add some kind of dedicated creative time into my week. The second is permission to fail. A great deal of my resistance stems from a need to be good at whatever I do, a remnant of trying to please a narcissistic mother for 44 years. I am working at being conscious of that and recognizing it for what it is...only an echo of someone else's judgment from my past. This was another lesson learned from my astrologer/artist friend. When she created an art quilt she didn't like, she cut it up and re-envisioned what it could be as part of another composition.  I need to channel more Kali energy, and let old patterns die so new energy can flow.

And finally, I will need to exorcise the demons from my past. I have never publicly identified myself as a survivor of abuse, but that is exactly what I am.  A flashback incident last summer in my childhood house sent me right back into therapy where I am exploring how, in spite of my childhood, I have thrived. Somehow, I had to strength and wherewithal to save myself. Which is exactly why living as someone else's dependent now is such a difficult state of being for me. I am learning to recognize that I am safe. That the person I love and upon whom I depend will indeed take care of me and loves me unconditionally.  And that what he is giving me right now is one of the greatest gifts ever...the time and space to find myself.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Ahhhh, New Year's Day.  The day we make resolutions to lose weight, listen to a countdown of the top 100 songs of the year, and are forced to page through the year-in-review stories in the local newspaper.  Oh, and this year we were also reminded that we are sliding down that slippery slope called the fiscal cliff.  If only the world had ended 12/21/12 like the Mayans predicted….

What I love about the New Year is that it marks a new start, a rebirth for so many of us.  We begin with a clean slate (or at least a new wall calendar) and begin to plan for the upcoming year.  It is also a time for reflection about the year that has just passed.  And 2012 has been one of the most significant years in my life. 

As I enter 2013, I am a different person than I was a year ago.  In January 2012, I had just come off of a series of “road shows” that left me exhausted, mentally and physically.  I was unhappy most of the time and relied on my usual self-medication rituals—overdoing and alcohol.  I felt trapped and didn’t know what exactly the problem was or how I would fix it.  By February, when we took our trip to Hawaii to return my in-law’s ashes, I couldn’t even enjoy the experience because I was so caught up in all of the things that needed doing.  In May, it all came to a head when I made the decision to leave my job within a year, and in August, I tore off the golden handcuffs and leapt into the void.  My safety net was the university at which I had earned tenure prior to the job I left, but even that presented its own set of challenges.  Now, I have one more semester before I make my May promise a reality.  As of this May, I will be, for all intents and purposes, unemployed.  Not retired, because I won’t be collecting any retirement, but on sabbatical from the working world for a while. I am excited and scared shitless at the same time. And so, my therapy continues.  I also face surgery at the end of this month which will leave me pretty incapacitated for six weeks.  I don’t do helpless well.  But I have been prepping for that down time and hoping to make the most of it.

I am currently taking stock and shedding. I have spent the past several months looking into my dark places, both figuratively and literally.  I started small with the “junk drawer” and have moved on to all of those closets and cupboards and boxes and drawers that have been accumulating stuff over the past couple of decades.  I have been re-evaluating what I need and appreciating what I have, and I realize that I have no need for many of the “things” (both literal and figurative) I have been holding onto.  So, purging has been my main activity.  Purging my mind, my house and even my body with a 3-day cleanse.  I have been reorganizing and reprioritizing in order to make space for whatever may be ahead…and I really don’t know what that is.  And I am really OK with that now.

I have discovered things that I forgot I had, internally and externally.  I am giving myself more creative license and also giving myself permission to just try things out without committing since my MO has been to take something on to mastery whether I really want to do it or not.  I am enjoying the “things” I have been finding in those out-of-sight places, and I don’t feel a need to gather in anything else, for the most part.  That accumulation of “stuff” made the little girl who grew up going without feel more secure, but the reality is I don’t need anything now.  And if I do, I have the power and the finances to acquire it.  So I am shedding all of those insecurities and rediscovering that I am in a safe and secure place, surrounded by only the things that make me happy and inspire me.

Little by little I will work my way through this house and garage, even though I am not really on a deadline.  I go where I am moved to go, and open the boxes that call to me. Right now, there is a large pink tote labeled “Michele’s Writing” sitting out and waiting for me to dig in and discover what I have set aside over the years. I look forward to the adventure.

Happy New Year.