shades of gray….

What is right, is not ALWAYS right. What is wrong is not ALWAYS wrong. What is right for you, may not and probably is not right for me. What I do that is right for me, is not wrong because you do it differently. I am not wrong because I am ME and not YOU. You are not right, just because you ARE you. Do we see a recurring theme here?? Good, then you’re finally catching on.

You may find it easier to live in a world of decisive, distinct slots that things fit neatly into, but I am not neat, and my shape definitely does NOT fit into a man-made slot that exists on this earth! Why do we judge but so finite and exacting terms? There are an infinite amount of possibilities, solutions and remedies that all might fix just one problem or issue in this world. That is amazing and should be a glorious and positive thing. Why do we rule these ideas and solutions out because we didn’t know they existed before? Because they didn’t come from where they “should have” or because someone chose to do it a different way than they “should have” and it worked! Why not rejoice in this success and be excited for a better way of doing things?

My life, in almost every way, has never fit comfortably into the “black” or the “white” of a given situation or choice or solution or healing remedy or lifestyle….does that make me wrong and you right?? Does that make my choice, my solutions, my remedies and my lifestyle wrong? or inferior? or poor quality just because it isn’t yours?? Let me say that part again because maybe that’s the part you don’t seem to understand. It isn’t YOURS. I may be happy by things that make you sad. I may enjoy what you find boring and tedious. I may loathe the things that you find exciting and hilarious. I may rejoice in things you find too small to waste your effort of celebration on….and that’s okay. I don’t want to be you. You shouldn’t want me to be either. I never could be no matter how hard you try. So if you are black and white, right and wrong, then we have a problem…

Because I am flawed, I am unique, I am glorious, I am damaged, I am strong, I am determined and I am weird.

I am gray….

broken eggshells…

No place is safe, no word spoken is sure to be taken without insult, no food is okay, no choice is approved, no help is wanted or appreciated….what is okay? How can you hide from being wrong or offensive when there is no where to go!? Step to the left or the right and the shells will be broken. Move forward and the delicate balance will be destroyed. How can one live like this and remain whole? How do you do anything without fearing either snippy misunderstandings or judgemental corrections of each action and every move you make?

You can’t walk on eggshells…they just keep breaking and the tiny shattered pieces break a tiny piece of me each minute of each day that I keep taking these steps. So is this what you do? I will not help. I will no longer offer aid. I will not eat in front of others. I will not share opinions and thoughts in group settings. I will not medicate the way I think I should. I will not continue to heal myself with positive thoughts and be proud of my strength. I will not be accepting of my life and joyful for my tiny moments. They are nothing. They are not enough. They do not count.

So this is what I have learned… I am doing it wrong. I am choosing poorly. I am giving up on my life. I am living a poor, unacceptable excuse for a life. I eat improperly. I consume sugar and carbohydrates. I do not strive to find new solutions or try new things when the old doesn’t make things better. I ruin the lives of those around me and cause them to worry. I am not active enough and do not push to do more. I am happy to be in this plateau that I am in and don’t care….about any of it.

So I cry myself to sleep each night and try to hide during the day and wonder how you keep the eggshells from breaking. I don’t think you can. I think the shattered pieces will just have to keep piling up because I don’t know how to live this way.

Tight rope walker

There is this thin gossamer tether of rope the hangs between who I am and who I will be. To the naked, uneducated eye it appears too thin, too weak and surely unsafe for even the lightest and most skilled of life dancers. But this is the way to get from here to there; there is no sturdy bridge or concrete walk or even the magic of a tesseract to instantly make the distant hope possible. No this is the way.

This rope that keeps connected to all that I can become is not as weak as it appears but a certain amount of determination and yes, even tension is necessary to make the impossible, possible. If this thread is too lax, then it will not support me. I could attempt to dangle over all that lurks below, travel hand over hand while gripping too tight; knuckles white, palms sweating. Truly knowing that each time I grasp, this may be the last, until my strength gives out and I am is lost.

Ah but then if the thread is too tight, if my need drives me to tie it too hard and force it to be something it is not, truly unyielding and static, then also the price will be paid. As I confidently step out one gentle foot after another, feeling secure in how tight I have forced it to be, I would get further than before but soon the tension would be too much. The fibers would begin to strain, the small threads within the rope would fracture and snap. Maybe not all at once, but slowly so that once I am within the very sight of the other side and most assuredly past the point of no return, I will know my fate and how there is now no chance of changing the outcome. After all, once I step out that far, holding on that tight, there is only one way and that way is down.

But then, if I trust this wisp of rope and all that it could mean for me and tie it securely but not forcefully. Wisely but not too loosely, could it get me to that which I seek? This lifeline lies across all that I know and am now. As I step out on this line, this time I  notice fear, self-doubt, bitterness and pain all wildly dancing like a whirling dervish below, occasionally reaching up to drag me down if I should waver or stumble along the way. If I look too long, the whirling becomes a swirling, that will turn into a swaying and I will lose all of my calm hard-fought balance and be caught up in all that commands my will to fall below. But as the old cliché goes, never look down. Keep my head up, gently and with proper respect for where I am, put one foot in front of the other, over and over….do not look to see how close I might be, impatiently expecting success. Do not look behind me to boast of how far I have come. This is not a game or ploy I can afford to lose my friend. The ability is there, the balance can be attained and that impossibly thin, and seemingly invisible rope can guide me to the other side…

The risk and the rewards…

I find myself in that moment cranky and short with my words to others. Don’t bother me, don’t ask me, don’t push me, don’t help me….I can’t do it. I don’t feel good. I’m not well enough. I’ll get sick if I go. I’m too tired. I can’t breath. All of this crap is ‘me’ and ‘I’ because of latent bitterness and frustration and helplessness and it just coils out like a whip, with just as much of a sting, at anything and anyone that comes around. I don’t stop to see what is going on in the moment. I don’t think what other people might need or that they may be weaker or hurting even more than I at that very time.

So often the times I force myself to do these things that “will make me sick” or “push me too far” are the most rewarding and the return is worth the pain or the recovery time because it ends up being about someone else and not me. It is for someone else and not me. I am with me, alone with me, inside of my head, alone with my pain, tallying my unhealthy times and days in the necessary journal so much of the time that it IS a physical thing to be pulled out and seeing something else. It can be a physical pain to be pulled out and doing something that last time made me sick…there is certainly fear working against me, a silent stalker that I bravely deny.

I am proud of myself for the times that I make (yes conciously stop and force my mind to see) myself to focus on what someone else might need from my reactions and how I go about my life and how I express what I feel. That it might effect someone how I carry my body, what my body rather than my words say and what I choose to talk about. There are choices for my care, for my health and for what I do in general that now I often make for what it will do for others, not whether it actually helps or might hurt me some. Because if it eases anothers pain, if smoothes the lines of worry and the tears of stress and futility on anothers face, isn’t it worth it?? So you take medicine you know may not make a difference, because the offer will let them know they are helping. You drink the tea you had 10 times today, because it is something they can do. You go on the trips you know in your heart you may not be ready for (or capable of), because just the fact that you did it will make them feel you are doing better and there is hope. Is it so wrong to ease anothers pain this way if it does no new harm to me? If I might have gotten sick anyway, isn’t this a better reason to risk the suffering for?? I am by no means a marytr and I am often selfish, self-pitying, and just dwelling in one symptom or another. But there are those precious moments of time when I do live for others as well. Times when I remember that I am not really alone in this one room as it so often seems. That others near and far are often feeling and being effected by me in this room whether I like it or not. That my pain is not just my own pain. My worries become their worries. My illness is in some part their illness also. As is my joy, their joy. So I must make the moments of joy, beauty, creativity, hope, healing and laughter be the most important focus every. single. day. To constantly push to regain the little pieces of me and of them that we have lost along the way.

It’s not just me. It’s us. And we need all the rewarding days we can possibly grasp and we need to hold on tight.

My Dreamcatcher is broken…

So I have a dream catcher…it hangs on my window, fully intact, strings unbroken, complete with beads and feathers. It appears whole, dusty but unchanged and yet somehow, my dream catcher is broken. I have periodically, but often enough to be of note. a recurring theme dream rather than one specific dream that repeats exactly in the same format again and again. This repetitive dream theme represents current aspects and emotions or mental states that have nothing to do with the specific settings of the dreams nor the same person in all the dreams but what it DOES represent truly does elude me. I could use a little guru to appear and tell me where this stems from and what does it really mean!?

The dreams are always very intense, emotionally and mentally. They usually contain angst and end in tears and never resolve comfortably. The stages of the situation of the dreams are not necessarily chronological when they occur in consecutive nights.

Some nights it is the beginning of the breaking down of all that is known, familiar, comfortable and loved. Something is wrong or off but I do not yet know that it is coming to an end, at least not in my head but perhaps in my heart. I may never know for sure. This dream is filled with a shift in the dynamic and the beginning of the spiral into loss of control. The emotions and elements are frustration, false accusation, the feeling of being invisible or unheard, of being found worthless and in this dream, anger. I am often screaming and screaming by the end and only having an effect on myself rather than him. This dream usually ends with me left alone, crying and frustrated and I wake up.

Some nights it is the actual ending of all that is known and right and comfortable. There is very little emotion from the other side. More a stating of facts, a laying out of the new way things will be, a resigned sense of defeat and already completed acceptance from the opposing party. There is no room for negotiation. No amount of pleading or begging can alter this change in the status quo. I am willing to alter all that I do and all that I am without a moments hesitation but I believe it is to keep things as they are because I am not ready for the change. It was not my decision, on my terms…in my control. Nothing will change this new decision however and the hope I cling to in this dream is actually denial. There is weeping, there is pleading. There is disbelief, surprise (was I really surprised, or did I know) hurt and desperation. It ends in tears, confusion and an extreme sense of loss and he is walking away as I wake up.

Some nights it is further along in the scenario where I am still in a position to believe I can regain what I have lost (whether I really want it back or not) and return things to the way they were. Only I will be different, better, improved, changed and whatever the word is that will convince the opposing forces to relent and agree. But this dream then turns to betrayal…the realization that now there is another where I am not. That the position has been filled, the emotions replaced, the possibility of regaining what I had and seem to need is impossible and has always been impossible, although I refuse to accept it as so. This dream is filled with betrayal, jealousy, abandonment, isolation, loneliness, desperation, failure and utter powerlessness that is all-consuming. I have officially lost the battle that was lost to me a long time ago. This also ends in tears and angst but I’m smiling on the outside because we are friends and I am okay. Of course it’s okay….I am okay. I wake up not okay….

Some nights it is even further down the road where I have “made peace” and accepted what the emotional return can and will be. I pretend I am happy for him and listen to his life and his problems because I am his friend. I offer suggestions and consolations that each cost me a little piece of my soul to say out loud and really try to mean them. The contact is less and less and the knowledge that even that small, pitiful grasp that I have is slipping away, has dawned on me at last. This dream is filled with regret, more emotional loss, and complete loss of control. This usually just ends in sadness and defeat. I hang up the phone and I wake up.

Now, today, I am fully aware that this was NOT the love of my life. The feelings of the “one that got away” are not that of a sentimental nature, but more from the fact that this was not an ending of my choosing. And up until this point, there had not been an ending that I did not think through, decide upon and then follow through with in my own time and my own way. So to me, this theme is more of a control issue than a pining for a lost love. For although the individual is always the same, I know that if it were still in effect today, the relationship would not have followed through to be healthy, creative, inspiring, or mutually beneficial. We ultimately would have wanted very different things and wanted to go in very different directions. He was a good person, a kind person, a fun person and a loving person. But he was never to be my person or me his, and there is no regret there at all. 

So if these dreams do not spring from love lost, he must represent something or several specific things that I wish to regain in my life now. If it is not about a lost love and the actual relationship, then it goes back to being representative of feelings that I had then in that situation, that must apply or be present now, without me knowing or fully acknowledging them.  That list, if I take the dreams and combine them all together, is not a comforting one. To re-cap we have angst, lack of closure, loss of control, helplessness, powerlessness, betrayal, jealousy, abandonment, isolation, loneliness, frustration, invisibility, being ignored or unheard, false accusation, worthlessness, denial, disbelief, hurt, failure, sadness, defeat, and in every dream the recurring feeling of utter desperation to regain the status quo. The biggest themes I see in this series being lack of control, unwanted change and desperation/failure.

What say you gurus?? What does this all mean??

Pay Attention!! Good things ARE happening…

So, I’ve paused a lot lately to take stock of things in life both good and bad depending on the mood of the day of course.

Some days I sit here thinking of the ridiculous limitations that my health and my psychological paranoias put on my life. How limited I am in my ability to travel and to go and do things that are sometimes as simple as visiting my sister, or going out to eat…anywhere. I ponder on how much I struggle to find things that I can eat. Period. Or if I’m really wallowing, I ponder on how I struggle to find things that I can eat AND enjoy! Whoa…I know. Amazing concept people. Some days I see how little progress I’ve made with meds and how little I understand about what helps and what doesn’t. How I’m always still guessing what to try now and am I analyzing my symptoms accurately?? Who knows!?! Probably not!!

But then there are the days lately where I am making myself see how many orders and sales I’ve been having in my little buisness, especially for it being January and right after Christmas when I figured no one would be spending money. And these orders have come just when I started my resolution that all my sales would go towards purchasing my Imitrex shots because I realize I need them to keep my ability to comfortably go and do things that I do now. That is too important to give up, no matter how expensive the meds. I just have to change how I medicate when I’m home and save them for being out!

I have made myself see, that by asking for help with things (when I have been too proud to ask in the past), I am able to do something fun and special for someone I love when I’m pretty sure I never could have made it really happen if I tried to do it myself and “just make it work”. When what I needed what was out of my reach, my friends and family were there to assist just like I’ve always known in my heart they would be.

You forget though…that it really works that way. You forget that people care. That friends and family aren’t “society” and can’t be just lumped in a cynical idea of people being selfish and looking out for themselves. We all look out for ourselves but so often helping ourselves really involves helping someone else. Being there for them and knowing that they will be there for you when you are at the bottom, looking for that hand to hold in the dark. So though I may acknowledge the “bad” and speak it’s name out loud, what I live and rejoice in is the “good”, the “amazing” and the “incredibly unexpected”. You should too….

The lost art of snail mail…

So I was writing out a couple of postcards this evening that have some amazing art on them I wanted to share with friends and I realized how rare it is for people to send each other postcards these days. Writing letters is also a dying practice it seems although people certainly write and email and type all the time the actual writing with a pen on a funny card or beautiful stationary. Getting that letter or card in the mail tucked amidst the junk mail and all the bills is always so uplifting! It can immediately brighten your day in a way unique only to the literally written word. Postcards are just the snail mail equivalent of a text message. Short, sweet, to the point and says Hi and I’m thinking of you with taking up alot of their time. Plus they get great pictures or art too!!

I love stationary. I always want to buy more even when I already have new sets. I love blank note cards with watercolor flowers or herbs on the front. I love vintage prints on cards or classic art from childhood books. I must force myself to go back through the stationary I have and pick what would be just right to mail to the person I’m going to be writing too and resist the urge to buy the new and beautiful ones I see everyday, especially on etsy (my I’m not spending money arch-nemesis these days)…..There is always one notecard or picture that is more appropriate for the intended receiver and is often just as important as what is written inside. Sometimes the stationary is the inspiration to write to that person because I want to send it to them more than I have something specific to tell them or share about. But I know when I receive a letter, the content isn’t even as important as the sharing and the connection and the act of reaching out…that’s what matters most.

So even if I am the last person, writing letters and sending them out into the void and I were to never get a response from anyone, I would still write. I would still want others to get something other than junk in the mail and to feel that connection even if only for the length of a postcard.