Yesterday was my birthday. It was a good day; I received many cards and wishes encouraging me forward into new beginnings, new starts, promises of days to come. I smiled. I agreed. I hoped. When it came time to blow the candles out, I forgot to make a wish. It's probably better that way.
The things I would have wished for, for me, for you, for us. Huh. What an extraordinary year it was, so much learning, living, loving, grieving, giving things up, giving things in, reaching for the bar, another start, falling flat on my face. One thing that hasn't come very clear as I've made my sporadic postings in this blog is how important I think it is to find the funny in every moment of the hell and the folly because, really, all of this shit can be very, very funny, and if you choose not to laugh, it's just all despair all the time.
For instance: a few weeks ago some most excellent pals of mine lent me their super-licious yellow lab to keep me company while my sweet boy was gone away for too, too long on a business trip. One Sunday morning, I took the old fellow out for a walk around the block so he could complete his morning tasks. Of course, the showoff preferred a performance. He decided to leave his remains in the yard of a home with a toddler, while the youngster watched us through the screen door, greeting us happily, good morning! His dad scooted over, I waved sheepishly and said, oh, hey, sorry about all this.
Don't worry he said; I bent down and picked up my grandstanding dog's leftovers on the lawn. Case closed, right? No big deal. Wrong.
I had the dog shit in my right hand, holding it in the enviro-friendly blue bag. The next step was to simply turn the bag inside out, so as to tie it up neatly and carry it away. Easy-peasy. Except the goddamn bag had holes on both sides. Out came the shit, ricocheted off of my pajama leg and went splat right back onto the sidewalk. And there I was, with two choices. 1. Decide that I was about to enjoy more or less the worst and most humiliating day of my life or 2. Figure that once you've had a pile of dog shit ricochet off of your leg and splat down irretrievably on the sidewalk, in front of an audience, it really can't get much worse. I did my best with option two. I made a half-hearted attempt to clean up the mess, actually waved again at the happy family behind the screen door, and tarried along on my way. What the fuck.
There's so much dog shit out there ricocheting off of us all the time. We try to clean up the way we talk about it so that maybe we can somehow talk ourselves out of admitting that it really is as bad as we fear it might be. If you read what I just wrote, you can see what I mean. At first I talked around my problem, the dog had tasks, remains, leftovers. But this is baloney. The dog needed to dump. And the worst part about caring for animals is that we get to clean it up.
We get to clean up the shit. So much shit.
Back to my birthday. Well wishes galore. People imploring my future to smile more brightly on me than have the past few years. I wanted to drop to my knees and insist it to be true. I don't know if it will be. I think it might be. I hope and I pray.
Minimally, I know this: even as I'm not sure about so much of what I believe, there are a few things that I cling to quite tightly, things that pull me through when I start to drown. I believe in hope. I believe in goodness. I believe that most people mean well. I believe in second chances, and maybe even thirds and fourths. I believe in saying I'm sorry and meaning it with all my heart. I believe in mountain hikes. I believe in drinking from streams. I believe in reading books. I believe in poetry. I believe in music.
And I believe the hummingbird at my window just might be the best sight I see all day, until my sweet love comes home from work and walks right through our door.
I believe all of these things, and for right now these things are enough to keep me moving forward through all of the shit I still must find a way to either clean up or else gracefully learn to endure.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Endo, Acupuncture and Leaning Into It
I've started acupuncture. So far, I've had two treatments and I'm not sure what to say about it except to say I'm encouraged and I like it very much. My accupuncturist is an old high school friend of mine and I think that helps -- I know she's not the "out there" type who will start ringing sterotypical chimes or chanting in some random way without warning. The description that I just gave is incredibly unfair to acupuncturists and proponents of Chinese medicine everywhere. Everywhere. I know this because of what I've experienced in my two go-rounds with the needles. Oriental medicine outdoes western medicine in its wholistic approach a thousand to one. Thank the heavens for humility and an authentic desire to listen.
Most amazing, incredible and, frankly, scary is my healer's insistence that I learn to lean into my pain. I call her my healer for I am not sure what else to call her, but I think that she would say that I must heal myself. She can administer my treatments, but I must do the work. But I don't want to call her my treater, and I don't want to call her my acupuncturist, and she is in a role beyond that of my friend when I am on her table so, for now, I shall call her my healer. I will assume that we both know what I mean and that you, my reader, do, too, even if I still have hepatic endometriosis at the end, if that ever comes. I very well might. I don't care. Centimeters of incremental improvement are enough, as is the incredible encouragement that comes from feeling heard and taken seriously.
But then there is the leaning into the pain. The pain. Yikes. When she says to lean into the pain, she means so much more than the hepatic endometriosis. There is no need to lean into that physical pain, it simply exists. Instead, she means, I am learning to mean, to lean into the direction that pain is meaning for me to take. What is that pain saying to me, to tell me about me? Where does it come from? Why is it here? What can it teach me? This pain as a gift -- a gift! -- to allow me to open to me, to my past, to the things that have sunk me below the surface of my life's water until I began to forget to breathe, held it all so tight that everything had nowhere to go except that one place where it had to live and learn to scream, my liver. Lean into that girl, lean into that.
Holy shit show. Holy shit.
Anger, sadness, grief, the sadness and hardness on myself. All the I didn't mean to's, should haves, could haves, would haves, twists and turns of fate.
Endometriosis is a bummer and a pain and a travesty to the hilt. I have also been telling people of late that it is an amazingly transcendent experience. Life's regularly scheduled programing -- the hurts that we all go through and the fun stuff, as well -- suddenly seem so much more manageable after these past few months (three months tomorrow) of getting through this. I find that when I laugh, I laugh harder. When I look forward, I really can hardly wait. I don't know how this story ends. I don't even know if it does. I surely hope this acupuncture is going to help. Lots of studies about acupuncture and endometriosis say it will. Yay.
I don't know how this story will end. But like I've said before, this is not it. Not for me. And whatever is your it, not for you either.
Hey you
Check out the view
Winding down the 1
Me and the miss
Sharin' bliss
And soakin' up the sun
And I feel like I've been resurrected
In my lifetime
I have never felt protected
And loved like I do
When I am here with you
Only You
And I know you've got something to believe in
Down deep inside your desperate soul
Hey friend don't you stop believin'
In the dreams that you had
The dreams that we all had
~Shawn Mullins, Beneath the Velvet Sun, 2000
Most amazing, incredible and, frankly, scary is my healer's insistence that I learn to lean into my pain. I call her my healer for I am not sure what else to call her, but I think that she would say that I must heal myself. She can administer my treatments, but I must do the work. But I don't want to call her my treater, and I don't want to call her my acupuncturist, and she is in a role beyond that of my friend when I am on her table so, for now, I shall call her my healer. I will assume that we both know what I mean and that you, my reader, do, too, even if I still have hepatic endometriosis at the end, if that ever comes. I very well might. I don't care. Centimeters of incremental improvement are enough, as is the incredible encouragement that comes from feeling heard and taken seriously.
But then there is the leaning into the pain. The pain. Yikes. When she says to lean into the pain, she means so much more than the hepatic endometriosis. There is no need to lean into that physical pain, it simply exists. Instead, she means, I am learning to mean, to lean into the direction that pain is meaning for me to take. What is that pain saying to me, to tell me about me? Where does it come from? Why is it here? What can it teach me? This pain as a gift -- a gift! -- to allow me to open to me, to my past, to the things that have sunk me below the surface of my life's water until I began to forget to breathe, held it all so tight that everything had nowhere to go except that one place where it had to live and learn to scream, my liver. Lean into that girl, lean into that.
Holy shit show. Holy shit.
Anger, sadness, grief, the sadness and hardness on myself. All the I didn't mean to's, should haves, could haves, would haves, twists and turns of fate.
Endometriosis is a bummer and a pain and a travesty to the hilt. I have also been telling people of late that it is an amazingly transcendent experience. Life's regularly scheduled programing -- the hurts that we all go through and the fun stuff, as well -- suddenly seem so much more manageable after these past few months (three months tomorrow) of getting through this. I find that when I laugh, I laugh harder. When I look forward, I really can hardly wait. I don't know how this story ends. I don't even know if it does. I surely hope this acupuncture is going to help. Lots of studies about acupuncture and endometriosis say it will. Yay.
I don't know how this story will end. But like I've said before, this is not it. Not for me. And whatever is your it, not for you either.
Hey you
Check out the view
Winding down the 1
Me and the miss
Sharin' bliss
And soakin' up the sun
And I feel like I've been resurrected
In my lifetime
I have never felt protected
And loved like I do
When I am here with you
Only You
And I know you've got something to believe in
Down deep inside your desperate soul
Hey friend don't you stop believin'
In the dreams that you had
The dreams that we all had
~Shawn Mullins, Beneath the Velvet Sun, 2000
Monday, June 1, 2009
Collective Loneliness
Sometimes the loneliness is too much. It's a strange thing to be lonely among people, caught between their presence and feelings of intense isolation, of being known and completly foreign to all. I imagine, too, that the loneliness is somehow collective; we all know it. Our skin is a boundary. It keeps you out. It holds me in. I must not spill. And so, I am here, inside of me, feeling my essence, but I cannot communicate to you, the other. For me this feeling resides like a sadness behind my ribcage, an ennui that both struggles and sighs.
Collective loneliness. This is the epitome of late modernity; where the social has fragmented and we are lost to one another, and so we seek new forms of identity to signify who we are, in the brands that we choose, the logos we sport, our consumerism run amok. It's becoming a song that I'm tired of singing, and I'm not even sure it is the point. Yet, we have the credit card bills to prove how hard we try. Collective loneliness. Trying to be like you, trying to still be me. But to articulate the ennui is impossible, right? To say, I am lost in the pain and the impossiblity of this task, this life, this emptiness, this possibility, this chance. I am immersed in love and foiled by loss, these opposites have met and I realize... I realize it is all going by me too fast. How did this happen? What will I do?
And yet, the current edition of Business Week is sitting next to me on my table as I write this, with the headline, What's a Friend Worth? The magazine, of course, means to establish how compaines will capitalize on Facebook and Linked In, as they did MySpace and Friendster before them since, ostensibly, there would be no point to the existence of these online sites without the possibility of making cash hand over fist. But I wonder -- in a world of collective loneliness, what's a friend worth? I feel so incubated all the time with this hepatic endometriosis, I want someone to know what I have, to understand what this is. No one really can because, well, people just don't get this. In the meantime, though, friends are worth a lot -- the humble ones at least, who just come and sit, and wait, and wonder, and say... It's going by too fast. We are immersed in loss and foiled by love. Let us risk this life to reach for some possibility, some chance.
Ennui. I swear to God that grief always comes with whispers of joy. I fucking hate that truth. And yet I humbly ascede to its promise. Even as I fucking hate it, too.
Collective loneliness. This is the epitome of late modernity; where the social has fragmented and we are lost to one another, and so we seek new forms of identity to signify who we are, in the brands that we choose, the logos we sport, our consumerism run amok. It's becoming a song that I'm tired of singing, and I'm not even sure it is the point. Yet, we have the credit card bills to prove how hard we try. Collective loneliness. Trying to be like you, trying to still be me. But to articulate the ennui is impossible, right? To say, I am lost in the pain and the impossiblity of this task, this life, this emptiness, this possibility, this chance. I am immersed in love and foiled by loss, these opposites have met and I realize... I realize it is all going by me too fast. How did this happen? What will I do?
And yet, the current edition of Business Week is sitting next to me on my table as I write this, with the headline, What's a Friend Worth? The magazine, of course, means to establish how compaines will capitalize on Facebook and Linked In, as they did MySpace and Friendster before them since, ostensibly, there would be no point to the existence of these online sites without the possibility of making cash hand over fist. But I wonder -- in a world of collective loneliness, what's a friend worth? I feel so incubated all the time with this hepatic endometriosis, I want someone to know what I have, to understand what this is. No one really can because, well, people just don't get this. In the meantime, though, friends are worth a lot -- the humble ones at least, who just come and sit, and wait, and wonder, and say... It's going by too fast. We are immersed in loss and foiled by love. Let us risk this life to reach for some possibility, some chance.
Ennui. I swear to God that grief always comes with whispers of joy. I fucking hate that truth. And yet I humbly ascede to its promise. Even as I fucking hate it, too.
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