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.

Letting Go of "Should"

I am always reflective at this time of year as we wind down to the holiday season and begin to look forward to January, the month of new beginnings, fresh starts, and resolutions to be better than we have been. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the motivations in my life, and I have realized that much of what I do...and what I have done for almost 50 years,,,has been based on the notion of "should."  On its surface, "should" seems harmless enough.  I should get up earlier so I have time to get things done at home before I head out to work. I should watch something more educational than "Real Housewives." I should really clear the chocolate out of my house.  Certainly I would be a better person if I always adhered to the "shoulds" of my life.

However, there are two problems with "should."  The first is, "should" is always predicated on a judgment.  And it is not always our own judgment.  Many times "should" comes from that little voice in our head, that critic who sits on our shoulders, who always reminds us we are not "enough." "You should lose weight because you are not thin enough." "You should get your nose fixed because you would be more attractive." "You should get a different job because you don't make enough money." "You should wear a helmet because you need to be safer."

Even though that inner critic is part of me, she has been formed not from my own judgments necessarily, but from those around me.  Live long enough with a critical person, and you indeed take on a constant state of being less than...and always measuring yourself up against someone else's standards.  Anyone who has lived in this situation knows that always striving to please another leads to stress, anxiety and an ever diminishing sense of self.  In our quest for acceptance, be it from a parent, partner, child or even society as a whole, we are always in a state of never measuring up, of never being enough.

And that leads to the second problem with "should." As long as we choose to exist in a place of inadequacy based on some outside standard, we contribute to our own lack of self worth.  We are culpable in our own misery, whether we realize it or not.  And instead of existing in the present and sitting with what is, of being content with who and what we are, we are constantly looking for what could be. This is very different than setting our personal goals for growth and self-fulfillment and working toward them.  This is about always judging ourselves by someone else's standards, and as a result, always coming up short. This is about allowing someone or something else to determine our own worth.

So, I am now closely examining all "shoulds" in my life.  Every time that little critic on my shoulder reminds me that I "should" be something other than who and what I am at this very moment, I will listen closely to determine whose voice, whose judgment, that really is. Is it my mother, the person I spent most of my life trying to please? Is it the partners or "friends" I have had over the years who needed to diminish me in order to elevate themselves? Is it the media I am surrounded by that tells me how I should look, how much I should weigh and what I should buy?  And if that "should" is not authentic to who I am right and how I choose to grow based on my own observations and analyses ("I should use my words more carefully because I do not want to cause pain to people I love."), I will recognize it for what it is, and leave it in the past where it belongs.

Today, I am enough. 

Down the Rabbit Hole

I have been on this journey without a map, leaving my destination up to the universe. But, instead of turning right and heading out into the world to seek my fortune, I have turned left onto the road less traveled.  In fact, it isn't a road at all, but a path full of turns and switchbacks that continues to take me deeper and deeper into myself and the issues I ultimately must uncover in order to move forward. I think, of all the things I have done in my life, this is the most difficult task I have undertaken.  There is no one who can share this journey, and no one who can really understand what I have lived and what I am currently experiencing. However, I have chosen my partner well, and although he hasn't lived my trauma, he supports me in processing it and provides me a safe place to fall when I need it.

My current journey has included another round of therapy.  In the past, I have sought out therapists to work through disruptive circumstances that have been bound by time, particularly radical change and tragic events.  My therapists have helped me to process my feelings and choose effective responses to these times in my life, and I have come out of therapy with new tools to call upon if I face similar circumstances in the future.  This is how therapy is supposed to work.

My current therapy experience is the result of an incident this summer that uncovered long-unresolved trauma from my childhood in an abusive household.  I was visiting my childhood home (which I escaped from the day after I graduated from high school) to see my step-father whose health has been declining and who is now slowly dying at home from cirrhosis.  In the middle of an innocuous conversation, he asked, "Do you remember when...'" and proceeded to describe one of the most terrifying events of my early adolescence.  I was speechless, not just because he brought this up in the middle of an unrelated conversation, but because being in that house again, all of the physical terror of that day came back in a rush. 

This is not a memory I have suppressed, but I have become very adept at intellectualizing my childhood abuse which effectively removes the emotion attached to it.  In this case, my defenses were down, and I was once again experiencing the terror of that day.  I held myself together for the next few minutes until I made an excuse to leave, and when I got into the safety of my car with my husband driving, the trembling and crying began.  I had shared this particular event, a recitation of facts, with my husband years ago, and we were both surprised by my reaction.  I really thought I had this under control.  But, as I have since come to realize, this is not something to control.  I need to really examine my childhood in all of its ugliness, including the fear, pain, humiliation and deprivation I experienced, in order to move forward. I have headed down the rabbit hole where nothing is as it seems.

The people who knew me during that time in my life would never have suspected that my home life was as awful as it was.  My defense has been to overdo and overachieve and put on a smiling face in public.  I believed my own ruse because that is how I survived.  Through my therapy, I have realized that I developed an amazing skill set that has allowed me to accomplish much, but I don't need the defenses anymore because I am safe now, and those things that have terrorized me for almost 50 years can no longer hurt me.

My treatment includes a good deal of reading, and I appreciate this because this honors how I process information.  I have come to understand that my mother was a narcissist, and because I did not fit into her construct, I became a target for her own anger and frustration.  Trapped in the Mirror has helped me to see myself in others' stories about their relationships with narcissistic parents who were unable to provide the love and care every child needs.  The Drama of the Gifted Child has helped me to understand how my coping skills have been a blessing, but have also shut me off from my own feelings. I am about to start M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie which explores the idea of evil and may provide some insight into how I avoided the fate of many children of abusers who become abusers themselves. 

My own escape is something I need to address because I am not sure, at this point, of how I managed to survive relatively intact.  If I had to guess, I would say that reading saved my life.  I knew, from an early age, that my situation was not "normal" because I didn't see it in the books into which I escaped.  But that is a topic for another therapy session.

In the meantime, I am about to hit the road to go back to my childhood home to visit my dying step-father and hopefully to recognize that even in that house where much of my terror originated, I am safe.  THAT is the work for today.  Wish me luck.

Remembering

For most people, tonight is a night for costumes and candy, bobbing and begging, tricks and treats.  For me, however, this night, Samhain, represents a time to reflect and remember those who have gone before us, honoring the souls of the loved ones who now reside in the spirit realm. This year has been especially raw because just yesterday, my deceased mother's birthday, I had to put down my sweet red Dobe Baron who suffered from lymphoma and heart disease, not quite a year after we gave this last gift to his Dobe brother Titan. And, my step-father now enters his fourth week in the hospital, steadily deteriorating from advanced cases of cirrhosis and COPD and not realizing that he will never, ever go home again. 

Tonight, as I do each October 31, I lit a candle in my front window to guide those departed spirits should they want to lift the veil between the worlds and make their presence known.  Tonight, I will say prayers of blessing for the loved ones who have gone to spirit before me and will greet me when I arrive. Tonight, I will pay close attention to my dreams.

I will look for the grandfathers who died the year I was born, and the grandmother I barely knew whose death from colon cancer didn't come to light until a random phone call from a cousin two years later.  I will look for  the grandmother who raised me and had a stroke when I was 11 followed by seven years in a nursing home bed where gangrene finally took her life.  I will look for my father, the parent I found and lost and found again, who waited for me to get to New York before falling into a coma and dying from AIDS in 1988 at the beginning of the epidemic. I will look for my father-in-law who never came off of the ventilator after surgery in 1998 for an aortic aneurysm and in whose hospital room I spent four months writing my dissertation before he finally decided to have his ventilator removed and let us send him on.  I will look for my mother who died two weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2006, and I will let her know how it haunts me to this day that I had to be the one to take her off of life support.  I will look for Adam who took his life the night before my birthday in 2008 and whose absence is at the edge of my awareness every single day, and most especially on those days I spend with our Hayli who still talks about the daddy she lost when she was two.  I will look for my mother-in-law whose fierce independence was ripped away by the stroke from which she never recovered, and I'll let her know that I wished I could have ended suffering when she begged me to do so.  And finally, I will look for every animals I have loved and lost whose shadows I sometimes still see and whose weight at the foot of the bed I still feel some nights. 

Tonight I will let the tears fall, take time for silence, and most of all...remember.

Preparing to Hibernate

This time of year, as the days grow shorter and the light, when it shows up, is uniformly gray, I feel the urge to store up and hunker down.  I gather everything in from the garden, fill the freezer with pre-made meals and baked goods and get my house just so, lining up inside projects that will keep me occupied for the next several months of darkness.

This year, however, my hibernation preparations have expanded to represent my life at this point in time.  I have gathered in all of my scattered belongings from the places that I used to be.  The totes from my last cubicle are stacked neatly in the garage, and the personal items in my current office can all be rolled out in the one wheeled case I have there in the closet.  I am gathering myself into one place, the home I have created over the past thirteen years. And the honest truth is...I really do want to hibernate.  I have said many times over the years, "I just want to quit...everything."  This year, that is a reality.

When I left my last job at the end of August, I knew I had a safe place to land at the university where I spent eight years as part of the university "family."  But four years has made a great difference.  Now, I see the institution through the eyes of an outsider, and although I dearly love my friends, I am not one of them any more.  I am an outsider, an interloper.  No matter how much I am enjoying spending time with my colleagues, I just don't belong.  You really can't go home again.

The truth is...I don't want a full-time job, and even this part-time job has demanded a great deal of the time I thought I would have for myself this autumn.  I am happy to be welcomed back so enthusiastically, but I don't want my tenure back; I don't want a full class load; I don't want the responsibility of the almost 90 student teachers I will have in the spring and all of their emails and texts and phone calls.  I just want to quit...everything.  At least for a little while.  At least until I figure out what I really want to do.

There have been novel ideas swirling around in my brain for quite some time, but I have never had the time or energy to even give that a try.  Now, I really want to.  I want the freedom of not having ANYTHING external on my calendar for long stretches of time.  I want to wake up without an alarm EVERY day.  I want to sit on my window seat and  read the books that have been accumulating on my shelves. I want to finish the painting that I started months ago and print out all of the photos I have taken that are inspirations for future art projects.   I want to fit and sew the pants that have been hanging out on my cutting table for over a year and needle felt the jackets I have had hanging in the closet for two years.  I want to learn to play the guitars and ukulele and piano that sit and wait for me.  I want to build a raised bed garden on my deck.  I want to cook out of the cookbooks I have gathered for almost 40 years.  I want to hike, and bike and kayak and walk the dogs.  I want to listen to music and dance and do yoga and move my body in ways that give me pleasure.  I want to travel and actually see the people I love. And...I want time to do absolutely nothing.

Since I have committed to next semester, I will have to wait a few more months, but I know now what I didn't know in August.  I don't have to be afraid not to have a job.  We have saved and been smart about our money and have everything we need.  I will not be one of those women in three overcoats pushing a shopping cart full of my worldly belongings. After a lifetime of being in survival mode, I know that I am safe.  That is a huge step for me.  It is one thing to leap into the void, and another thing entirely to know you will land safely wherever that may be.

Last May I gave myself a year to do what I needed to do to bring joy back into my life.  In August, I quit the job that was sucking at my soul.  Now, I am on the home stretch.  By this May, I will be done with an external job and all of my other professional commitments I am in the process of eliminating.  I don't need another thing to add to my vitae.  In fact, I don't need a vitae at all.

Now, I think I'll have a cup of tea.

The Illusion of Control

I think that I am finally understanding that I have been delusional for most of my life.  I spend a great deal of time plotting and planning and orchestrating so that things turn out the way I think they should.  Sometimes it happens.  And it is those sometimes that feed into my delusions, fueling my notion that I actually have control over life.  But when I stop and look back...really look back...I see that the only control I have is over myself, and even that is subject to circumstances far beyond my control.

For quite some time, just when I think I have it all figured out and am ready to start the next phase of my plan, I hit a major bump in the road that has set me back, and that bump is usually accompanied with pain--physical, emotional, psychic.  I am beginning to wonder if this life is about learning that, in fact, I don't have control, and that I need to let go and not hold so tightly to the plans I have made for myself and the people around me.

I have gotten better at this as I grow older, but even now, I experience the sting of disappointment over things that I know I cannot change, but desperately want to.  I have been a "fixer" for most of my life...another of my coping mechanisms, because if I can "fix" whatever is wrong, I have taken control of the situation...or so I think.  I the past five years, however, I have had far too many instances where I have been blindsided by circumstance, providing a regular reminder of my own impotence.

My son's suicide four and a half years ago dropped me to my knees.  As a parent, you think you know your children, and even though my children came to me through marriage, I had been their parent since they were small children, and in the years before his death, Adam and I were very close.  He came to me with his problems and asked for advice.  He opened up about his hopes and fears; he talked freely about his struggles.  Or so I thought.  The Sunday before his Monday night death, he was here with us and his daughter, sharing pizza and his latest problems with the woman he was seeing. Late Monday night, those problems came to a head, and he chose to end his life. We got the call Tuesday as we were coming home from my birthday dinner.  From that moment and for the next several weeks, I was on autopilot because the enormity of what had just happened was just too much to comprehend.  And it still is.  As parents, we both keep asking ourselves what we could have done differently, what we had missed, and what finally drove him into his bedroom with a gun as the only solution.  And we just have no answers.  We could have helped, could have maybe "fixed" some of the problems we found out about later, but those options didn't exist because our child was an adult who ultimately made his own decisions.

Now, as parents, we struggle again with circumstances beyond our control.  Like most parents, we wanted better for our children...better than we had, freedom from the struggles we faced early on, an easier path.  And like most parents, we tried to teach and model how to get to that place in life.  But adult children make their own choices, and whether we agree or not is irrelevant.  We can only sit by and watch how things play out.  We have no control.  And what we want for them is irrelevant.  Yet, we still ask the same questions with no answers.

So, once again I sit on the sidelines, hurting for my child, but not in a position to change anything.  My therapist tells me not to "futurize," and that is difficult for me, because I still plot and plan and orchestrate, even though I recognize I can only do this for myself and ultimately, my outcomes are hit or miss depending more on circumstance...or planetary alignment...than anything else.  The illusion of control is still very pervasive in my life, even with eyes wide open.  Burns knew this long ago...

The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!