Scars

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

I had just read this excerpt from the Velveteen Rabbit earlier this week, and then I heard it tonight in my friend's wedding. I take it in a slightly different manner than the pastor intended, but it is the same basic idea. To be "real" - whatever that means to you - hurts, but is worth it. Some times though, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like I am done feeling. Like I would rather have my eyes in my sockets, and ears that don't flop quite so much, and to live on a shelf, untouched, with my un-mussed fur and well tied bow. But that isn't reality, and that isn't how we want to be or live. Not usually.

Aren't we all the velveteen rabbit in one way or another? Don't we all have some good scars from being real, but also some bad ones?

My best friend just published her second book (HIGHLY recommend it: Magical Shrinking: Stumbling Through Bipolar Disorder, www.christianewells.com)and on her blog she posts about an experience of working with a girl who is a cutter and recognizing so many things in that moment, and connecting to how she herself was one years ago. She writes this line about what happened following a girl asking her if she was a cutter, noting the most visible scar, a vertical one that runs up her wrist:

"I said yes, and we sat in silence, looking at our scars."

I am too tired to really write, and too emotionally spent from a messed up day - full of my pettiness and over sensitivity, and elements of fiction blurring the truth, because both make me hurt and one rubs in the pain of the other - and now my head is full and I need to slow my thoughts or (preferably) put them in a drawer and try to rest.

I miss blogging, maybe getting it out, out into a space where I am pretty sure it is no longer read, but it is out there, some where, is helpful. It eases some of the loneliness, to think of common connections.

Oh that sounded dramatic.

just not doing anything i should be

time seems to stop yet pass quickly. the hours run and run and my activities stand still. my doctor said that she doesn't understand how i can be disorganized and yet say that my new medication is helping me be focused. i tried to explain that my brain isn't disorganized - my life is. my life is disorganized. i have a theory that, well is correct, that if i could just get my house clean then i could get everything, or some things done. which i currently don't do. i have so much homework, and cleaning, and people to call, and emails to write. yet i just sit. i write to my colleague about a client who gets so overwhelmed that she can't do anything and i think that it is amazing that i am emailing her at all since i am too much like that client. and unfortunately that client knows. what is she some sort of see-er? (hazard of watching Angel)

anyway. a whole day wasted minus an oddly hopeful meeting with my boss. which i almost started crying. thank god for calming techniques ACTUALLY working for once.


wow, i'm DREARY.

What are you trying to tell me Willow Tree?

April 05, 2010

It looks like sun, I can see it through the hanging branches of the willow tree. Lighting up the softest, sweetest greens. Yet the water taps my windows and moves the newly formed pond around the apparently broken drain in the parking lot below.

It was pouring this morning when I left my doctor. I was pouring, the sky was pouring, we were in a synchronized dance - we struck a perfect balance. And then it let the sun out. Is it trying to tell me something?

I look into my spreadsheets and documents. I review work samples and folders. I think of writing letters to my students, but instead know I need to prep a presentation, and apply for a job. A job so that I can pay rent next month. And then rent makes me think of bills. Bills that are late.

The world is heavy and burdensome. But I am eerily calm. Empty? It is hard to say what I am. I am moving forward through the stacks of homework, but not making the needed calls to get the bills paid and stop the threat of collection. Is there a threat if nothing in red has arrived? Is that how I should be seeing my world?

And the bank. And the kitchen sink. All things in need of attention. But I write, and stare at willow trees and passing birds, and at my sleeping cat. I feel the knots in my stomach tingle, and the joints in my hand contract and pull into themselves. Straining my neck to crack I try to release its pain. And it makes that sharp sound, and I feel my tendons reject the pull on the shoulder, but the spot inside my neck is happy, if just for a minute or two. I stretch back and hear the popping through my hips, feel the aching in my shoulders. And I think, "Lately, I feel so old."

I turn to the pile of orange folders to my left, and think I should put them in a traveling cabinet of sorts, make my class more organized. I turn my head to the living room and debate an episode of television with lunch, knowing it is a very bad idea.

But my hands hurt and I don't want to type. And I don't want to think of the pain or to-dos, for just a little while. And I want to not feel, physically, and to feel motivated mentally. And I want my doctor to be wrong, because I want a cup of coffee. And her theory of no sugar and no coffee is unacceptable. Can I follow the rest and leave those out? That may be my only choice.

Memories/Skin

Why would a person want tokens from their past? Why would they keep things that upon holding them in their hand could make them sad? Evoke an array of feelings. Is it not better to erase things? To file them away in your brain as far away from your immediate memory as possible?

No. I have labeled, altered, hid, and run from memories. Surely I need to let go of some, physical and otherwise, but I like to keep pieces of people, and stories. I want to have tangible things that remind me of who I was, who I am, who I've loved. I can re-write how I see them, but I do not want to delete them.

In but 3 decades I have been so many people, yet wearing the same skin. How? How can it be? I have been beautiful, and ugly. Sweet, and cruel. I have loved, and I have hurt people, I have been careless with mine and others' hearts. And some of that I wish I could forget. I find it interesting, and impossible, that people claim that they do not have regrets, that they learn from their choices etc, and do not hold onto them. To me I think you can do both, because I have. I hold regrets, and I learn from them, or try to. That doesn't mean I should dwell on them, which I am wont to do on occasion. But it means I know them. Our actions are burned into us, imprinted on our souls, and in our thoughts and there patterns and development. I see them in me, the good and the bad. I see them in the creases around my eyes - the laugh lines, the aging, the marks. These are all parts of a complex life, a human existence.

Life is a series of choices. Some that, my God, I would do differently. I cannot pretend otherwise. It is always difficult to say that though. If I love the people in my current life, and I know it is the actions I have taken that led me to them, then how can I say I would do things differently? Because this string of reality, this person that I am, would not exist; so I would not know what I am losing. Just like I do not know what I would have gained had I not made certain decisions. The primary reason I would not do things again is not for my happiness being more or less than it is, but for a chance to not have hurt the people I love. That is what I would rather erase. Remove the stains from my actions in the way that they affected other people. Nothing is harder for me than knowing that I have hurt my family and friends.

Life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I turned to page 32 instead of 67. I took one path, if I had taken another, which literally could have been one different turn of a page, then I would not be who I am. The lines on my face would be different. And other people's lives would be different.

That is one of the things that is so amazing about reality, if any of us had made one different decision, turned to page 59 instead of 91, not gone to a BBQ one night, or even returned a call, we would not be where we are. Some people would say that that is the marker, the sign or thing that tells us we are where we are meant to be. And perhaps they are correct. Because every cause has an effect, ever action a reaction, but that doesn't make all of our actions okay; and it doesn't mean that I should erase what happened before I turned those pages. Before I altered the course of mine and others' lives.

So my original question, why would a person want tokens from their past, really does tie into this. We have taken our paths, chosen our inadvertent adventures, but we are creating, and sadly forgetting, memories all along the way. For me in an effort to live with the bad, I have sometimes altered the good. To make me look or feel better for things I chose. Or I have forgotten the good, it has been overshadowed by the darker story lines; so the tangibles sometimes help refocus the intangible. They help ground some memories, remind me of love, of happiness in the same skin but as a different person.

In many ways people may never change, but in many, many others, everything else about them can be different. I have remained ever the same, yet I am a dramatically different person living a dramatically different life since I turned from page 31. It is a difficult dance between knowing, remember, forgiving, forgetting, wanting to keep, or hold onto pieces of the past - all of these components. But we are the sum of many parts, which means we carry those within us, and sometimes we should carry them outside too. On a shelf, or in a closet. Or in a box.

when the sun & moon stop dancing

I watch the horizon. I watch the melting lights. I see the colors bleed as the darkness falls. I feel the weight of night as it is sliding in, and then quickly conquering the day. At winter, at least. Winter is the time of the conquering. In summer the day and night dance, they state up late together and laugh. But in Fall they start to distance, every year the same, pulling and pushing at evening, and by the full throws of winter, the storms that lack the enthusiasm of lightening and thunder on warm wet days, the light is pushed down deeply - completely, traceless.

That is this week. This month. Months? The darkness started with a creeping and then spread. It has invaded all of the pieces. The sum of the parts make a messy mosaic. The colors go bland and the aching prevails as the tiles expand and contract while the glue tries to breathe but cannot as it is pressed together, art on background, forced to stick and dry. It is as though all of the light stood in the back and the glue poured over it, tiles at first delicately placed, developing their image, were then pushed aside by this parade of madness as the pieces fell. The picture, less discernible, except for the memory. Brains, hearts, and bodies have memories of their own, unconsciously formed. They have this memory, or shadow of a shape that you can see, feel - if you look closely enough.

This season's mosaic is like that. The images cry out calling for splashes of color occasionally pushing through only to be pushed down by the heaviness of the night sky. I am left begging the stars to come out. Pleading with the constellations to fight for me. But deaf can be the ears of the heavens. Not the ears of God. But the universe's tongue goes quiet, and the sea of people around, even with their love, joy, and beauty melting into me, they do not sustain. So I go home and the river within purges itself, spilling out into my strained subjective reality.

The madness on parade, within, with out swallows the sensibilities, the faculties, and compress a whole girl into a small box - big enough for an ocean of sadness, small enough to hide within.

Tonight the rain will not fall, just a dark curtain leans in on me. Heavy it hangs, strung across the sky.

When in doubt . . .

When in doubt, look back. When was the last time your spirit felt whole? When you found yourself at peace on a more regular basis. Mine was at 19. Life was different, of course, but there is a chord - a thread - that remains within me, that links me to her (younger me). Even as life changes and we develop and grow up or older, we harden or become softer around the edges, we shift from right to left and back again, or not, and expand and contract within our beliefs about God, love and the world, even within all of that, we stay the same in some way. A chord that keeps you YOU or me ME. And when I follow my chord back, it is to a simpler time. A 19 year old girl, new to university, living with her sister, constantly re-arranging her apartment and seeking a peace in her soul.

At that time what was I doing. A little bit of yoga. A LOT of humor. Yes, many tears and heart break (and drama) but to feed my art and soul, to remain unblocked, I wrote. But I was writing with instruction and intention. I was reading Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way. I was doing morning pages. And when you purge in stream of consciousness for 3 pages, for 30-45 or 60 minutes and then DO NOT re-read it or worry about it but turn and close the pages of your notebook or put them away in an envelope for a few months, you realize that your day is different. Whining, decreases. Pettiness decreases. Productivity and efficiency improves. You become free from the muck that was cluttering your brain. You are taking a vacuum to your unconscious and letting yourself go.

I was also reading SARK. She is a flamboyant, wild, art loving, brilliant woman. She is knocked for possibly holding to new ageyness, but really she is trying to exude life and walk in healing - allowing us to confront pain and see our connection to the rest of humanity.

In those days I liked bright colors. I liked being outside. I did not stay inside on days I could just because I could. I embraced things. I was still depressed sometimes, but I don't think I was so ruled by fear as I am now.

So when in doubt . . . go back. Back to a time that was successful. A time where I felt whole. Whole will feel differently now. My bruises are different. My hurts tell a different story. My entire story has been written and re-written so many times. But I can go back and pick up those pieces and make them part of a new mosaic. Sitting in pain and accepting it, even labeling it, is good. Embracing and living in it, is not.

For me, I have to loose my hold on other things. Like perfectionism. "Perfectionism is a pre-requisite for pain" (Tara Branch). And I am tired of seeking out pain - academically, relationally. I want to live with intention. With love. Not frustration or bitterness. I do this, but not like I CAN, but I also live up to the negative expectations people have of me. My friends who treat me like I am mentally ill (intentionally or not and who probably do not even know it - because I have not told them) often get a broken or down version of me. Because I choose fear, I choose to not be LIVING and I feel that they will not see me beyond the gray version of me they have cast before their eyes and I give them that girl. She is so familiar, but she not who or ALL of who I am. It is painful, but I rise to this bleak occasion. It is painful that I am treated like I am different and painful that I engage.

Anais Nin wrote, "People who live deeply have no fear of death." Living deeply is a choice. I can't promise to make it daily, but I can find the time that sparked that depth. It feels like ages and ages ago. But I can reclaim myself because no one else can.

Icicles & Airplanes

I was staring out the window yesterday. It was covered with the moisture it collects throughout the night - it is the coldest room in the house. But despite the cold I opened the door to take in the chill. It gets so hot these days, which makes no sense. The trees don't turn these day. Which makes no sense. I hide inside these days, which seems the same and always makes sense - because I like to see the world through my single pane glass and not through walking along the concrete. I walk if the trees are throwing their leaves down at me. I walk if my steps fall on crisp colors and moisture damaged leaves. I watch the parking lot. I miss my old home where I could watch the birds and squirrels and trees and bundle up. My apartment, 15 degrees lower than the outside world, but refusing the insanely high electric bills I layer up and sit at my desk. I read. I write. I look forward. Chased by memories. But everything is the same and yet everything had changed.

There were no icicles hanging from the airplanes, they simply flew high high away and like giant birds they took up too much space. They sped through clouds and passed the sun. I stared up from the ground in amazement, pulled my coat around myself, watched the skies turn gray, felt the rain fall, blurring my vision. I thought of finding an inside to hide, but sometimes there is no need. The icicles just melt around me.