I've been neglecting this blog lately because, I'm pleased to report, I've been living the heck out of life.
Right now I'm sitting in the Burbank airport after a week-long visit to Aunt Jane. It was a top-notch vacation: beach time, lots of LA tourist stuff, visiting Great Aunt Mabel, lots of driving around with the top down, ice cream, shopping, vegging on the couch, hotel therapy, my first experience of room service ever (it was as decadent as I imagined), the wild animal park in San Diego, Universal Studios.
And as an added bonus, I'm also coming back with my regular life in better shape than when I left. For one, I'm much better dressed, thanks to unabashed spoiling on AJ's part; I've also had lunch with a woman who works in the field I'm considering; had heart-to-hearts; been turned on to a new unresolved sexual tension TV character relationship to become obsessed with; have two high-quality free gift lip sticks and a lip gloss; learned many important tricks to employ on my mac; and have been proffered a place to host my future celebrant web site for free.
As if all of this wasn't enough: Before I left for California I called AJ for advice about a hairy problem related to last summer's illness/insurance debacle as well as me being a frightened disorganized lunatic at the time. She just told me to bring the whole sickening pile of files with me and we'd sort it out together.
Far beyond the call of duty, she just up and made the whole problem go away. I get choked up typing about it. I feel like the word gratitude is totally insufficient to express what I feel.
The Twin and I have talked about this feeling, like for example, at Christmas when you get too many really great presents and you just think "I can't! It's too much! I'm not worthy!" - the feeling of gratitude being almost too much to tolerate.
I think the Twin and I decided that the best way to deal with it is just to be grateful and strive to make your actions consistent with someone who is worthy of that scale of generosity...and also resolve to pay it forward at the earliest opportunity. In AJ's case it's long been established that the older and more decrepit she becomes, the more loyal and devoted I will become, in turn. I can only hope for an opportunity to be a fairy god-niece in turn.
As AJ said when I tried to express some of these thoughts to her, she said "We're family. It's what we do."
Probably most of the world's problems are caused by the fact that not everyone has a family like mine.
To conclude, I offer this excerpt from the lyrics of "If You're Going Through Hell, keep on Going" by Rodney Adkins:
But the good news
Is there's angels everywhere out on the street
Holding out a hand to pull you back up on your feet
Showing posts with label ulcerative colitis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ulcerative colitis. Show all posts
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
This Time Last Year
Not to linger in the past, but as the calendar turns and personally significant dates come into view again, I can't help but think about what I was doing 365 days ago. This time last year I was about to begin a 24-hour fast before a colonoscopy/endoscopy.
From the vantage point of a year's time, the whole summer was a blur of sweaty bike rides past tractor trailers and dumpsters to work, stomach cramps, getting to know the ugly new cubicle world that had become my life, and making frequent trips to the bathroom. I used to sit outside at the picnic table in the overgrown grass in the blistering sun, eating pre-canned tuna and crackers, and calling MamaBear to complain. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, " was all I could say.
I recently tried eating one of those tuna packs again, and found that I no longer liked the taste. I have close to a physical aversion now.
I am trying hard to think of that time not as a miserable miasma of misery, topped with a soupcon of fear and a smattering of foreboding insurance letters, but as a time when I went up against scary, bewildering, painful things, and came out on top. As evidence of grit and bounce-back-ativeness, and not the suckiness that is achievable in this life.
In honor of this, and of the book by Cheryl Richardson which I just picked up at the used bookstore that instructs me to do so, I will now write a list of 25 things I have accomplished in the past year.
1. Managed newfound chronic illness and attendant insurance mazes, pill regimens, doctor's appointments, dietary restrictions, symptom tracking, and medical bills. (Guess what, I pay off the hospital stay this month!! Now all that's left is the ER visit and the butt-scopes :/) In fact, let's make that an entirely separate accomplishment:
2.Paid off majority of attendant medical bills.
3.Quit soul-sucking job despite unknown outcomes.
4. Did so in a classy and non-spineless way.
5.Dealt with fallout from remarkably crap-tastic year of catastrophe.
6.Joined a writing group.
7.Took an art class.
8.Re-discovered my enjoyment of working at Eastern State.
9.Turned down offer to return to soul-sucking temp job.
10.Discovered my new favorite Ethiopian restaurant with Spangles.
11.Graduated from Celebrant school.
12.Landed 3 celebrant gigs, including one with a couple I'm not friends with!
13. Downloaded free screenwriting software.
14. Became obsessed with, and inspired by, the tv show ballykissangel.
15. Found and signed lease on a new apartment with Spangles.
16. Learned some things about West Philadelphia's history.
17. Spent a lot of quality time at family events.
18. Made medium-firm plans to attend graduate school.
19.Got a new computer.
20.Learned to cook some new dishes.
21. Began collecting songs for my happiness playlists.
22.Spent time with old and new friends.
23. Began collaging with magazine cutouts.
24.Started writing in this blog.
25. Survived. Didn't give up. Kept trying.
So, there I go. Not bad for a rebound year.
From the vantage point of a year's time, the whole summer was a blur of sweaty bike rides past tractor trailers and dumpsters to work, stomach cramps, getting to know the ugly new cubicle world that had become my life, and making frequent trips to the bathroom. I used to sit outside at the picnic table in the overgrown grass in the blistering sun, eating pre-canned tuna and crackers, and calling MamaBear to complain. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, " was all I could say.
I recently tried eating one of those tuna packs again, and found that I no longer liked the taste. I have close to a physical aversion now.
I am trying hard to think of that time not as a miserable miasma of misery, topped with a soupcon of fear and a smattering of foreboding insurance letters, but as a time when I went up against scary, bewildering, painful things, and came out on top. As evidence of grit and bounce-back-ativeness, and not the suckiness that is achievable in this life.
In honor of this, and of the book by Cheryl Richardson which I just picked up at the used bookstore that instructs me to do so, I will now write a list of 25 things I have accomplished in the past year.
1. Managed newfound chronic illness and attendant insurance mazes, pill regimens, doctor's appointments, dietary restrictions, symptom tracking, and medical bills. (Guess what, I pay off the hospital stay this month!! Now all that's left is the ER visit and the butt-scopes :/) In fact, let's make that an entirely separate accomplishment:
2.Paid off majority of attendant medical bills.
3.Quit soul-sucking job despite unknown outcomes.
4. Did so in a classy and non-spineless way.
5.Dealt with fallout from remarkably crap-tastic year of catastrophe.
6.Joined a writing group.
7.Took an art class.
8.Re-discovered my enjoyment of working at Eastern State.
9.Turned down offer to return to soul-sucking temp job.
10.Discovered my new favorite Ethiopian restaurant with Spangles.
11.Graduated from Celebrant school.
12.Landed 3 celebrant gigs, including one with a couple I'm not friends with!
13. Downloaded free screenwriting software.
14. Became obsessed with, and inspired by, the tv show ballykissangel.
15. Found and signed lease on a new apartment with Spangles.
16. Learned some things about West Philadelphia's history.
17. Spent a lot of quality time at family events.
18. Made medium-firm plans to attend graduate school.
19.Got a new computer.
20.Learned to cook some new dishes.
21. Began collecting songs for my happiness playlists.
22.Spent time with old and new friends.
23. Began collaging with magazine cutouts.
24.Started writing in this blog.
25. Survived. Didn't give up. Kept trying.
So, there I go. Not bad for a rebound year.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
To the Progress-Toward
It's graduation season, parents are out in full force, cameras in hand, students are in dresses and collared shirts, the sun is shining, the tents are up.
Here is a link to a commencement address given by Her Wiseness, Oprah. I like the way she lays it out. Basically, her secrets to living are:
1)Follow your feelings. Check your gut. If it doesn't feel right don't do it.
2)The biggest lessons in life come dressed as detours, obstacles, or full-blown crises. Ask every failture, every crisis, every difficult time: what is this here to teach me?
3)To move forward, you have to give back.
I also liked this advice: When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.
And I also really dug this: "Difficulties come when you don't listen to life's whisper. If you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream."
That pretty much sums up a good half of my troubles of the year 2009.
A year ago I was in a place that didn't feel right, working with people who, contrary to Oprah's advice, did not trust or cherish or treasure me, or vice versa. And I was about to take a job that felt not right at all, (ignored the whisper) and I took it and I was right, it wasn't right, and I got the scream. (It came out my butthole in the form of ulcerative colitis.) It screamed, "Girlfriend, your life ain't right!"
So maybe, just maybe the lesson I can learn is to listen to myself better, and do what I know to do. This year for "graduation" I want to move closer to where I'm supposed to be. I want to get my life right. And I want to be BFFS with Oprah.
Here is a link to a commencement address given by Her Wiseness, Oprah. I like the way she lays it out. Basically, her secrets to living are:
1)Follow your feelings. Check your gut. If it doesn't feel right don't do it.
2)The biggest lessons in life come dressed as detours, obstacles, or full-blown crises. Ask every failture, every crisis, every difficult time: what is this here to teach me?
3)To move forward, you have to give back.
I also liked this advice: When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.
And I also really dug this: "Difficulties come when you don't listen to life's whisper. If you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream."
That pretty much sums up a good half of my troubles of the year 2009.
A year ago I was in a place that didn't feel right, working with people who, contrary to Oprah's advice, did not trust or cherish or treasure me, or vice versa. And I was about to take a job that felt not right at all, (ignored the whisper) and I took it and I was right, it wasn't right, and I got the scream. (It came out my butthole in the form of ulcerative colitis.) It screamed, "Girlfriend, your life ain't right!"
So maybe, just maybe the lesson I can learn is to listen to myself better, and do what I know to do. This year for "graduation" I want to move closer to where I'm supposed to be. I want to get my life right. And I want to be BFFS with Oprah.
Friday, April 16, 2010
The Problem with Peacefulness
I had a thought-provoking talk with my spiritual advisor yesterday. I realized that there is a worry balloon in my mind and I tend to prefer it inflated. As I have alluded to ad nauseum already, certain events of the recent past did in fact merit an all-out orange alert. But now that things have settled down, I find that I am still dutifully inflating the worry balloon, only with things that probably don't merit all that real estate. It's like I have one of those cartoon accordion puffer thingies for fireplaces, and I'm just puffing away, trying to keep the logs blazing: Taxes! Work! Money! Apartment! Car! Medecines!Bug bite! Rash! Roof leak! Big worry, little worry, I don't discriminate, just as long as I can keep the home fire burning.
Because in a certain sense, a state of constant worry has come to feel like home. I'm not saying the year of bad luck like traumatized me for life or anything, but yeah, it did scare me. I mean sh*t got scary, and we did the human thing - we started running screaming.
It was like "AAAAAhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Arterycancerdespairbrokencolon Monster!!! RUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!!!"
Which was totally the reasonable, evolutionarily-programmed thing to do. The issue is that now, there have been no signs of the monster behind me, but I am continuing to run, scared by every rustle I hear.
Now it's like "AAAAAAhhhhhhhh!!!!! A cockroach! And my taxes are due! RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!!!!!"
And eventually you get to this panting, bent over position, and maybe you recognize that those things can't hurt you the way the monster can, but the thing is now you know what's out there in the forest. You've seen it up close and smelled its breath and you know the way he pops out at you out of nowhere, without even the courtesy of sinister cello music, you could just be minding your own business riding the bus.
And now that you know, you don't want to let your guard down. The monster could come back at any time. You know this.
And so it seems reasonable to try to keep the adrenaline up, keep the proverbial baseball bat by the bed, as it were. What it comes down to is, you've had quite a scare and you want to protect yourself.
So in fact it's peacefulness and relaxation that feels dangerous, because you've let your guard down, exposed your soft underbelly to any passing predator.
Now, I understand that being constantly on an adrenaline buzz has its drawbacks. I still maintain that having a constant barrage of stress hormones coursing through me contributed to my ulcerative colitis. As someone, I forget who, maybe Martha Beck, pointed out, we don't really need the same equipment to fight today's modern-day foes as we did in the days when we had to run from charging mastodons. Today poise and clear-headedness and keen problem-solving techniques are more likely to rescue you.
Unfortunately, my body has not caught up yet with my big ole' brain, and my body still says "Run!!! Bad stuff out there! Get the hell out of Dodge!"
I think there's a reason I've been sleeping at Spangles' house so much lately, why I started needing to turn on fans for background noise to fall asleep, why, when I am home alone I have keep the mental decibel level fairly high with movies or dumb internet gossip sites or overblown anxieties. It's because I don't feel safe in my own home - it's like, listen guys, the ceiling fell down . That sh*t can happen.
And is it Jungians who believe that the house is symbolic of the self? Because I'll be honest, I don't feel safe here, in my own life. What a sad thing to hear myself say.
Perhaps this explains my recent obsession with interior design (interior design) and my obsessive apartment hunting and my recent subscription to Country Living. I do want to rebuild, remodel, redecorate. I want to start again.
All this is to say, I have a problem with being peaceful. In my pursuit of happyishness, this is probably something to think about. I read a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh in my high school soul searching days, and even though I knew that the whole peace-is-every-step, smile gently at the universe thing was what I was supposed to want, there was a voice in me that said "Thich, my man, this all sounds really groovy and everything, but isn't kind of...boring?"
I wanted, and I still want, passion, whitewater, fireworks, windswept adventure. I want to be ravished and tossed out of airplanes and to be clinging to sides of Six Flags rides. I want rush, and thrill, and drama. By comparison, my idea of peacefulness and contentment - puttering around the house like a retiree, watering plants, gazing with Buddha-like serenity at a blade of grass - I mean, isn't that all a little anti-climactic?
I mean what's wrong with the inside of my brain being like a cracked out illegal rave?
I guess the thing is, as tumultous as it sometimes is inside my head, it's not like I'm actually on safari or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or anything. I'm getting my panties all in a twist about like, paperwork and home (dis)repair.
Perhaps if I could get my insides to be more peaceful, I could direct some of that penchant for drama toward something more fun - like writing a sweeping, passionate book, for example. Maybe it's not a matter of giving up excitement for a life of staid flower-watering and contentment, but choosing whether the excitement will come from chasing big dreams and taking on ambitious projects and doing works of daring and creativity - or from chewing my fingernails to the nubs over the cable bill and a traffic ticket and the exorbitant price of soy nuggets.
Maybe I can serve the world with my desire for excitement and liveliness, rather than my fear of bad things happening.
The truth is, bad things do happen, they happen all the time. But in my experience, whatever it is will probably be far more f*ed up than your tiny little anxious imagination could've come up with, and if it does hit, it'll happen whenever it happens, whether you're cowering in fear or not. So when the giant meteor hits, you might as well be reclined on a chaise lounge sipping a margarita.
Because in a certain sense, a state of constant worry has come to feel like home. I'm not saying the year of bad luck like traumatized me for life or anything, but yeah, it did scare me. I mean sh*t got scary, and we did the human thing - we started running screaming.
It was like "AAAAAhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Arterycancerdespairbrokencolon Monster!!! RUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!!!"
Which was totally the reasonable, evolutionarily-programmed thing to do. The issue is that now, there have been no signs of the monster behind me, but I am continuing to run, scared by every rustle I hear.
Now it's like "AAAAAAhhhhhhhh!!!!! A cockroach! And my taxes are due! RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN!!!!!"
And eventually you get to this panting, bent over position, and maybe you recognize that those things can't hurt you the way the monster can, but the thing is now you know what's out there in the forest. You've seen it up close and smelled its breath and you know the way he pops out at you out of nowhere, without even the courtesy of sinister cello music, you could just be minding your own business riding the bus.
And now that you know, you don't want to let your guard down. The monster could come back at any time. You know this.
And so it seems reasonable to try to keep the adrenaline up, keep the proverbial baseball bat by the bed, as it were. What it comes down to is, you've had quite a scare and you want to protect yourself.
So in fact it's peacefulness and relaxation that feels dangerous, because you've let your guard down, exposed your soft underbelly to any passing predator.
Now, I understand that being constantly on an adrenaline buzz has its drawbacks. I still maintain that having a constant barrage of stress hormones coursing through me contributed to my ulcerative colitis. As someone, I forget who, maybe Martha Beck, pointed out, we don't really need the same equipment to fight today's modern-day foes as we did in the days when we had to run from charging mastodons. Today poise and clear-headedness and keen problem-solving techniques are more likely to rescue you.
Unfortunately, my body has not caught up yet with my big ole' brain, and my body still says "Run!!! Bad stuff out there! Get the hell out of Dodge!"
I think there's a reason I've been sleeping at Spangles' house so much lately, why I started needing to turn on fans for background noise to fall asleep, why, when I am home alone I have keep the mental decibel level fairly high with movies or dumb internet gossip sites or overblown anxieties. It's because I don't feel safe in my own home - it's like, listen guys, the ceiling fell down . That sh*t can happen.
And is it Jungians who believe that the house is symbolic of the self? Because I'll be honest, I don't feel safe here, in my own life. What a sad thing to hear myself say.
Perhaps this explains my recent obsession with interior design (interior design) and my obsessive apartment hunting and my recent subscription to Country Living. I do want to rebuild, remodel, redecorate. I want to start again.
All this is to say, I have a problem with being peaceful. In my pursuit of happyishness, this is probably something to think about. I read a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh in my high school soul searching days, and even though I knew that the whole peace-is-every-step, smile gently at the universe thing was what I was supposed to want, there was a voice in me that said "Thich, my man, this all sounds really groovy and everything, but isn't kind of...boring?"
I wanted, and I still want, passion, whitewater, fireworks, windswept adventure. I want to be ravished and tossed out of airplanes and to be clinging to sides of Six Flags rides. I want rush, and thrill, and drama. By comparison, my idea of peacefulness and contentment - puttering around the house like a retiree, watering plants, gazing with Buddha-like serenity at a blade of grass - I mean, isn't that all a little anti-climactic?
I mean what's wrong with the inside of my brain being like a cracked out illegal rave?
I guess the thing is, as tumultous as it sometimes is inside my head, it's not like I'm actually on safari or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or anything. I'm getting my panties all in a twist about like, paperwork and home (dis)repair.
Perhaps if I could get my insides to be more peaceful, I could direct some of that penchant for drama toward something more fun - like writing a sweeping, passionate book, for example. Maybe it's not a matter of giving up excitement for a life of staid flower-watering and contentment, but choosing whether the excitement will come from chasing big dreams and taking on ambitious projects and doing works of daring and creativity - or from chewing my fingernails to the nubs over the cable bill and a traffic ticket and the exorbitant price of soy nuggets.
Maybe I can serve the world with my desire for excitement and liveliness, rather than my fear of bad things happening.
The truth is, bad things do happen, they happen all the time. But in my experience, whatever it is will probably be far more f*ed up than your tiny little anxious imagination could've come up with, and if it does hit, it'll happen whenever it happens, whether you're cowering in fear or not. So when the giant meteor hits, you might as well be reclined on a chaise lounge sipping a margarita.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Dissapointment, Malaise, and Pulling Myself Out of It (Again)
I was in an inexplicable slump the past few days. It's harder to write here (or at all) when I'm feeling down. My spiritual advisor Leslie suggested the word inertia. All I wanted to do is get under the covers and watch many back to back episodes of Intervention on the internet.
It might've had to do with the news that Spangles and I didn't get the apartment we applied for. Of course, I dealt with it maturely and moved on quickly, except maybe I didn't, and what was inexplicable was actually my disappointment sneaking to the surface anyway. As much as I wanted to roll with the punches, the news touched a tender spot for me: the fear that even if you work and plan for a desirable life/future, forces beyond your control will eventually use your hopes and dreams as a port-a-potty. So why even try? (Thus, the mouldering dishes in the sink, the tsunami of clothes strewn carelessly about the apartment, the half-hearted and not very successful attempts at, you know, doing anything.)
I know I have to fight this inclination. I have to talk myself out of it, say "Listen, disappointments come but great apartments are plentiful and the great life you imagined in this one didn't come from the apartment, it came from you." I'm also sort of toying with the belief that life is unfurling according to a higher logic that I can't necessarily understand from my vantage point but ultimately makes things work out OK. It's a comforting thought, but I really don't know if I believe it or not.
When I feel myself get down I also get panicky, because I'm like "oh no happinessFAIL" and I have a really hard time tolerating it and reminding myself of what I really do know, that I won't be stuck there forever. That's the problem, my panic makes my mind slow and I can't remember to do the things I know to do.
Finally I did, though. I called The Twin, and she told me to just accomplish one productive thing, because that usually makes you feel in control of the universe again. I walked my rent check over and it did in fact make me feel like at least a minimally effective human being. I took a shower. Then Spangles called and said F-Money and friends were grilling, and you know I was in a bad place because I didn't even really feel like going. The Twin convinced me, however, to put on civilian clothes and a little makeup and get out there anyway. Fake it till you make it, as they say.
And then I remembered my cache of inspirational books, and grabbed one to read on the trolley. I opened it up to a page where they author was basically like "Hey, you think nobody ever has bad days, gets scattered, makes mistakes? You think everyone else has it all together? 'Cause they don't. We're all perfectly imperfect, all the time." And I did that old familiar inner forehead slap and some of the pressure eased.
And then at F-Money's I drank sun tea and talked of other things, and by the time dark had fallen and the tiki torches were lit and we had supped and drank wine, the panic had slipped away completely.
And a lovely coincidence also helped me. Several months ago, as I was crawling out of the rubble of my bout with colitis and hopelessness, I bought myself a pretty little ring as a reminder that I am responsible for my own happiness. I had lost track of it for several weeks, but as I was dumping out a purse to get ready to go, it fell right out onto the floor like a gift.
I picked it up and put it on my finger, a reminder, a message I'd left for myself from a more enlightened time.
It might've had to do with the news that Spangles and I didn't get the apartment we applied for. Of course, I dealt with it maturely and moved on quickly, except maybe I didn't, and what was inexplicable was actually my disappointment sneaking to the surface anyway. As much as I wanted to roll with the punches, the news touched a tender spot for me: the fear that even if you work and plan for a desirable life/future, forces beyond your control will eventually use your hopes and dreams as a port-a-potty. So why even try? (Thus, the mouldering dishes in the sink, the tsunami of clothes strewn carelessly about the apartment, the half-hearted and not very successful attempts at, you know, doing anything.)
I know I have to fight this inclination. I have to talk myself out of it, say "Listen, disappointments come but great apartments are plentiful and the great life you imagined in this one didn't come from the apartment, it came from you." I'm also sort of toying with the belief that life is unfurling according to a higher logic that I can't necessarily understand from my vantage point but ultimately makes things work out OK. It's a comforting thought, but I really don't know if I believe it or not.
When I feel myself get down I also get panicky, because I'm like "oh no happinessFAIL" and I have a really hard time tolerating it and reminding myself of what I really do know, that I won't be stuck there forever. That's the problem, my panic makes my mind slow and I can't remember to do the things I know to do.
Finally I did, though. I called The Twin, and she told me to just accomplish one productive thing, because that usually makes you feel in control of the universe again. I walked my rent check over and it did in fact make me feel like at least a minimally effective human being. I took a shower. Then Spangles called and said F-Money and friends were grilling, and you know I was in a bad place because I didn't even really feel like going. The Twin convinced me, however, to put on civilian clothes and a little makeup and get out there anyway. Fake it till you make it, as they say.
And then I remembered my cache of inspirational books, and grabbed one to read on the trolley. I opened it up to a page where they author was basically like "Hey, you think nobody ever has bad days, gets scattered, makes mistakes? You think everyone else has it all together? 'Cause they don't. We're all perfectly imperfect, all the time." And I did that old familiar inner forehead slap and some of the pressure eased.
And then at F-Money's I drank sun tea and talked of other things, and by the time dark had fallen and the tiki torches were lit and we had supped and drank wine, the panic had slipped away completely.
And a lovely coincidence also helped me. Several months ago, as I was crawling out of the rubble of my bout with colitis and hopelessness, I bought myself a pretty little ring as a reminder that I am responsible for my own happiness. I had lost track of it for several weeks, but as I was dumping out a purse to get ready to go, it fell right out onto the floor like a gift.
I picked it up and put it on my finger, a reminder, a message I'd left for myself from a more enlightened time.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Secret of My Success: 30% Perspiration, 70% Procrastination
Well, I am on two tight deadlines that are kinda of own making today, so naturally it was a great time to surf blogs and make exorbitantly lengthy comments on blogs I'd never heard of until an hour ago. Still, rather than letting all that hot air go to waste, I thought I would reprint my comments here. This was in response to a question from this guy's reader, who had a job that was not-so-slowly destroying his soul and wanted advice. Now this is a topic I know a thing or two about. Below, my response.
::::::::::::::
I am another one who has been there. Last year I took a job I knew I would hate, because everything kept saying how awful the job market was, etc. I was, predictably, miserable. Coincidentally (or not!) I also developed a chronic inflammatory disease that has been linked to stress and which has been very expensive and time-consuming but thank god is treatable.
All I can offer is what helped me:
1. See a counselor, stat! Even if you don’t want to, you don’t think you need to, you can’t afford it…whatever. Just go. Does the crappy job have benefits? Find out if they include mental heath. If not, go anyway. Someone will work with you. Make it work. The Psychology Today web site has a good finder tool for therapists.
2. Lean on your peeps. I leaned hard on my boyfriend, my friends, my parents, my cousins. I mean I was a *mess*. But it’s true what they say, you find out who your friends are. If you don’t have a strong support network, see item 1. But have the guts to ask for help.
3. “One is not got out of the cave, one comes out of it.” I think Simone de Beauvoir said that. The only person who can save you is you. I think the fact that Mark wrote this email is a good sign that he’s workin’ on it.
4. Brainstorming your options. OK, so the traditional “send resume, wait for call” approach is not working right now. What else could you do? Leave no stone unturned. Could you move in temporarily with family or friends to save money? Have a roommate move in with you? Move somewhere where you don’t need a car? Give up cable? Do you have a skill or knowledge set that other people would pay to have access to that you could advertise on craigslist? For me, even thinking of really heinous options was oddly refreshing. Thinking about how much of a personal failure it would feel like to move back in with my parents was kind of motivating. There is always a choice, and there is more than one. Thinking that the only two choices are “be miserable or lose everything” is just false.
4. Taking care of yourself. Getting enough sleep, trying to eat right, trying to get some exercise. I realize when your job totally sucks you dry and when you’re really in pain, it’s hard to do anything but numb out with food/alcohol/TV etc. Maybe think of one thing you could do that would bring you some energy, or just some fun. I hate to admit it, but all that cliche touchy feely stress management stuff kinda helps – going for walks, taking a bath, calling a friend, writing in a “journal.”
5. Hear yourself: the job is literally killing you. It’s literally sucking the life force out of you. Save your own life, man! It is really risky and really scary to jump out of a burning plane. So you have to pick – scary jump with uncertain outcome? Or certain death by burning plane?
5b. That said, you don’t *have* to jump tomorrow. As tempting as it is to drop it like a hot potato (and I’m not convinced that’s *not* the best idea), you could also start small. Start plotting your escape. Add one good thing to your life each week. Or take one bad thing away.
6. You gotta believe. I know all too well how hopeless and impossible it seems when you’re in the middle of it. You just have to go on faith that a better future awaits and that better possibilities await. It really doesn’t seem that way when all you can see is the reality in front of you. But it really is true, i’m telling you. When you ARE in the right place (or at least headed there), you can tell.
7. Recognizing that it’s the work of a lifetime to find out your life’s work. Mark has a really good start because he already knows that what he’s doing… ain’t it. Cross that one off the list. Every person has something that they can give to the world – sometimes it’s hard to recognize because it’s right in front of you, a passion or a talent that seems like no big deal because it’s such a part of you that you don’t notice it. But to put it another way, the longer Mark stays in this wrong job the longer he is depriving the world of what he has to offer. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the rest of us who need what you got!
My life isn’t perfect or anything now, but it’s waaaay better than it was. I still look back on that time and cringe. If there’s any use for it it’s the ability to tell people “no, seriously, just get out. it IS possible.” Changing my life around felt less like a magic wand wave and more like crawling out of deep well using only my fingernails, but at least I was going somewhere.
Even just from his comments, you can see Mark has a lot going for him – he is articulate, apparently well-educated, good vocabulary. I’m sayin’, times are tough. No one’s saying it isn’t hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. But you gotta fight for your life, the good life, the one your soul is rebelling against not having. In some ways, this is bigger than you. Obey!
::::::::::::::
I am another one who has been there. Last year I took a job I knew I would hate, because everything kept saying how awful the job market was, etc. I was, predictably, miserable. Coincidentally (or not!) I also developed a chronic inflammatory disease that has been linked to stress and which has been very expensive and time-consuming but thank god is treatable.
All I can offer is what helped me:
1. See a counselor, stat! Even if you don’t want to, you don’t think you need to, you can’t afford it…whatever. Just go. Does the crappy job have benefits? Find out if they include mental heath. If not, go anyway. Someone will work with you. Make it work. The Psychology Today web site has a good finder tool for therapists.
2. Lean on your peeps. I leaned hard on my boyfriend, my friends, my parents, my cousins. I mean I was a *mess*. But it’s true what they say, you find out who your friends are. If you don’t have a strong support network, see item 1. But have the guts to ask for help.
3. “One is not got out of the cave, one comes out of it.” I think Simone de Beauvoir said that. The only person who can save you is you. I think the fact that Mark wrote this email is a good sign that he’s workin’ on it.
4. Brainstorming your options. OK, so the traditional “send resume, wait for call” approach is not working right now. What else could you do? Leave no stone unturned. Could you move in temporarily with family or friends to save money? Have a roommate move in with you? Move somewhere where you don’t need a car? Give up cable? Do you have a skill or knowledge set that other people would pay to have access to that you could advertise on craigslist? For me, even thinking of really heinous options was oddly refreshing. Thinking about how much of a personal failure it would feel like to move back in with my parents was kind of motivating. There is always a choice, and there is more than one. Thinking that the only two choices are “be miserable or lose everything” is just false.
4. Taking care of yourself. Getting enough sleep, trying to eat right, trying to get some exercise. I realize when your job totally sucks you dry and when you’re really in pain, it’s hard to do anything but numb out with food/alcohol/TV etc. Maybe think of one thing you could do that would bring you some energy, or just some fun. I hate to admit it, but all that cliche touchy feely stress management stuff kinda helps – going for walks, taking a bath, calling a friend, writing in a “journal.”
5. Hear yourself: the job is literally killing you. It’s literally sucking the life force out of you. Save your own life, man! It is really risky and really scary to jump out of a burning plane. So you have to pick – scary jump with uncertain outcome? Or certain death by burning plane?
5b. That said, you don’t *have* to jump tomorrow. As tempting as it is to drop it like a hot potato (and I’m not convinced that’s *not* the best idea), you could also start small. Start plotting your escape. Add one good thing to your life each week. Or take one bad thing away.
6. You gotta believe. I know all too well how hopeless and impossible it seems when you’re in the middle of it. You just have to go on faith that a better future awaits and that better possibilities await. It really doesn’t seem that way when all you can see is the reality in front of you. But it really is true, i’m telling you. When you ARE in the right place (or at least headed there), you can tell.
7. Recognizing that it’s the work of a lifetime to find out your life’s work. Mark has a really good start because he already knows that what he’s doing… ain’t it. Cross that one off the list. Every person has something that they can give to the world – sometimes it’s hard to recognize because it’s right in front of you, a passion or a talent that seems like no big deal because it’s such a part of you that you don’t notice it. But to put it another way, the longer Mark stays in this wrong job the longer he is depriving the world of what he has to offer. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the rest of us who need what you got!
My life isn’t perfect or anything now, but it’s waaaay better than it was. I still look back on that time and cringe. If there’s any use for it it’s the ability to tell people “no, seriously, just get out. it IS possible.” Changing my life around felt less like a magic wand wave and more like crawling out of deep well using only my fingernails, but at least I was going somewhere.
Even just from his comments, you can see Mark has a lot going for him – he is articulate, apparently well-educated, good vocabulary. I’m sayin’, times are tough. No one’s saying it isn’t hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. But you gotta fight for your life, the good life, the one your soul is rebelling against not having. In some ways, this is bigger than you. Obey!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Hitting the Reset Button
So the shitstorm is a-wailin' at the Parent Company, and I am like the foolhardy TV reporter clinging to the sideways palm tree.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder, and rolled around in bed, on the floor, back in bed, with pillow, without pillow, got up and tried yoga poses, got back in bed and tried to ignore it.
Interrupted sleep is always such a rude surprise to me, because normally I'm an excellent sleeper. Among the best.
I finally took some Tylenol and tried the last, and least palatable, trick in my book, which is just to sit with the pain and focus on breathing in and out. (This trick is courtesy, well, lots of people over the years, but most recently I've been reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn). When I allowed the pain rather than mentally running from it full-speed, I realized that it was coming in dull spasms that were a good 1 - 2 breaths apart. I found that I was able to calm myself down enough in between spasms that I got drowsy and finally fell asleep again.
As you might guess, I did not arise in the most rosy-cheeked and resplendent of moods. I had to get to the Parent Company earlier than my usual time, which meant rush hour traffic, I'd slept through the time I'd allotted to take a shower which was, to put it delicately, sorely needed, and it was raining, and I made my instant coffee in the dark and dumped in too much grounds so it tasted like crap-syrup. Plus, my right neck and shoulder still hurt like a beast.
Despite playing my emergency inspirational playlist entitled "Hold On," on the way to work, I was in decidedly poor shape by the time I got there.
I decided I needed to start over. Just go to the start menu, hit shut down, wait 30 seconds, and then reboot. I started with calling the massage place and scheduling a same-day appointment.
I've never had a massage before today and it both was and wasn't what I expected. Was, because it felt reeeallllly good, and I was pretty much zoned out drooling about two minutes into it. What was surprising was a) tearing up when she placed her hands on my head at the beginning and b) when she finally hit that sweet spot right where the ouchies were, I felt an immediate zing back down to the old irascible colon. It was like the ball of tension got scared out of its hiding spot and settled right back in its colon-cave, like a hermit crab of dull pain.
And what I was surprised to feel while I was facedown on the massage table drooling up the carpets, was something almost like remorse. It was like: wow, body - we've been in like, actual pain here. We've spent so much of the past year in physical and psychic pain, and I've been in such a hurry to leave that all behind, but my body has forgotten much more slowly than the rest of me.
And I started to feel sorry. I'm sorry, body, for yelling at you so much. I know you don't have language so you have to get the message across in whatever way you can. I spend so a lot of time plugging my fingers in my ears saying "shut up shut up shut up, I don't have time for this now!" when it's telling me we're tired, we're hungry, we're stressed out, we're still. in. pain. I keep trying to placate it by swallowing my palmfuls of pills, but it's like a pet that doesn't totally understand the whole gist of it all. All it understands is it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and you gotta respect that. You can't just be like, "Hey, walk it off."
I felt sorry for dragging it all over town, stuffing in whatever food is on hand at whatever time is most convenient for the rest of my agenda, sorry for guzzling down caffeine as a replacement for rest, for energy, for the Life Force itself. Sorry for slapping it around and making it wear underwear with holes in it and skipping the night-time toothbrushing and forcing it to squint at streetsigns rather than taking the time to get a new pait of glasses. No wonder it's going on strike.
And I was sad to hear a phrase echoing back to me which I'd heard before from myself during those dark times when I was sick, like really sick, something the doctors couldn't tell me but which I nonetheless knew to be true. My body was speaking to me and it was saying, "Liklik, your life ain't right."
Dammmmmm. I mean haven't I learned this by now?! I thought for sure I had skipped merrily into the light, into a life of contemplation and yoga and watering my herb garden and reading personal growth books and writing in my journal with a special pen. But here I am with the rest of the mortals, running around like a headless chicken, pace too fast, demands too much, apartment like a bomb went off, playtime not nearly enough, and the herbs are all dead, dead, dead.
I left the massage place in a quasi-dream state. I felt like everything was in slow motion. "Keysss...keysssss...I need car keys now. Car keys. Caaarrrr keeeeys." The world seemed very loud and seemed to be moving very fast. I found myself crying in the car again, but these weren't like frenetic stress tears, or Dane Cook "I tried my best" tears. These were slow-moving tears from down in the bedrocks, tears that cried themselves with great compassion, out of respect for the great quantities of grief and pain there can be and is and will be in the world over. The tears of a sage! The tears of person whose people have lived through war and sickness and evil but kept living despite it all!
I came back, drank some water, took a hot shower. I consult the voice of reason. She says, it's not to late to start again. She says at least you know where you are, because that will help you get where you want to be. She says start over. Begin again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever amen.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder, and rolled around in bed, on the floor, back in bed, with pillow, without pillow, got up and tried yoga poses, got back in bed and tried to ignore it.
Interrupted sleep is always such a rude surprise to me, because normally I'm an excellent sleeper. Among the best.
I finally took some Tylenol and tried the last, and least palatable, trick in my book, which is just to sit with the pain and focus on breathing in and out. (This trick is courtesy, well, lots of people over the years, but most recently I've been reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn). When I allowed the pain rather than mentally running from it full-speed, I realized that it was coming in dull spasms that were a good 1 - 2 breaths apart. I found that I was able to calm myself down enough in between spasms that I got drowsy and finally fell asleep again.
As you might guess, I did not arise in the most rosy-cheeked and resplendent of moods. I had to get to the Parent Company earlier than my usual time, which meant rush hour traffic, I'd slept through the time I'd allotted to take a shower which was, to put it delicately, sorely needed, and it was raining, and I made my instant coffee in the dark and dumped in too much grounds so it tasted like crap-syrup. Plus, my right neck and shoulder still hurt like a beast.
Despite playing my emergency inspirational playlist entitled "Hold On," on the way to work, I was in decidedly poor shape by the time I got there.
I decided I needed to start over. Just go to the start menu, hit shut down, wait 30 seconds, and then reboot. I started with calling the massage place and scheduling a same-day appointment.
I've never had a massage before today and it both was and wasn't what I expected. Was, because it felt reeeallllly good, and I was pretty much zoned out drooling about two minutes into it. What was surprising was a) tearing up when she placed her hands on my head at the beginning and b) when she finally hit that sweet spot right where the ouchies were, I felt an immediate zing back down to the old irascible colon. It was like the ball of tension got scared out of its hiding spot and settled right back in its colon-cave, like a hermit crab of dull pain.
And what I was surprised to feel while I was facedown on the massage table drooling up the carpets, was something almost like remorse. It was like: wow, body - we've been in like, actual pain here. We've spent so much of the past year in physical and psychic pain, and I've been in such a hurry to leave that all behind, but my body has forgotten much more slowly than the rest of me.
And I started to feel sorry. I'm sorry, body, for yelling at you so much. I know you don't have language so you have to get the message across in whatever way you can. I spend so a lot of time plugging my fingers in my ears saying "shut up shut up shut up, I don't have time for this now!" when it's telling me we're tired, we're hungry, we're stressed out, we're still. in. pain. I keep trying to placate it by swallowing my palmfuls of pills, but it's like a pet that doesn't totally understand the whole gist of it all. All it understands is it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and you gotta respect that. You can't just be like, "Hey, walk it off."
I felt sorry for dragging it all over town, stuffing in whatever food is on hand at whatever time is most convenient for the rest of my agenda, sorry for guzzling down caffeine as a replacement for rest, for energy, for the Life Force itself. Sorry for slapping it around and making it wear underwear with holes in it and skipping the night-time toothbrushing and forcing it to squint at streetsigns rather than taking the time to get a new pait of glasses. No wonder it's going on strike.
And I was sad to hear a phrase echoing back to me which I'd heard before from myself during those dark times when I was sick, like really sick, something the doctors couldn't tell me but which I nonetheless knew to be true. My body was speaking to me and it was saying, "Liklik, your life ain't right."
Dammmmmm. I mean haven't I learned this by now?! I thought for sure I had skipped merrily into the light, into a life of contemplation and yoga and watering my herb garden and reading personal growth books and writing in my journal with a special pen. But here I am with the rest of the mortals, running around like a headless chicken, pace too fast, demands too much, apartment like a bomb went off, playtime not nearly enough, and the herbs are all dead, dead, dead.
I left the massage place in a quasi-dream state. I felt like everything was in slow motion. "Keysss...keysssss...I need car keys now. Car keys. Caaarrrr keeeeys." The world seemed very loud and seemed to be moving very fast. I found myself crying in the car again, but these weren't like frenetic stress tears, or Dane Cook "I tried my best" tears. These were slow-moving tears from down in the bedrocks, tears that cried themselves with great compassion, out of respect for the great quantities of grief and pain there can be and is and will be in the world over. The tears of a sage! The tears of person whose people have lived through war and sickness and evil but kept living despite it all!
I came back, drank some water, took a hot shower. I consult the voice of reason. She says, it's not to late to start again. She says at least you know where you are, because that will help you get where you want to be. She says start over. Begin again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever amen.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Creation Myth
About eight months ago, something happened that is so uncommon for me as to make it truly remarkable: I didn't want to eat.
I didn't want to because eating, or more precisely, digestion, caused excruciating pain and some other very unpleasant results. I remember looking at a salad someone at work had brought for lunch and thinking "Aw helllll no!", and starting in on my saltines. My business casual clothes started hanging off of me, but I couldn't enjoy the rapid weight loss because I was scurrying to bathroom every ten minutes like clockwork, doubled over.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was in the throes of what was eventually diagnosed as ulcerative colitis, which is when your colon freaks out for reasons that are not entirely clear to medical science. Another thing that is pretty clear in hindsight but which seemed to escape me at the time, was that I was acutely miserable, and not just because of the problems with the ole' poopshoot.
I was going through what you might call a Bad Time. I was working at a disheartening job, after a bout of unemployment, after having been un-hired in a somewhat unclassy way from a job I'd been working at for five months as a temp-to-hire (minus, apparently, the -to-hire part.) On top of that, each parent, my father one month and my mother the next, had to undergo major operations for life-threatening diseases. Louise, the cat I'd taken in during college and then adopted out to my aunt in order to give her a better life, passed on. On top of that, one day I came home to my apartment and as I opened the door the entire dropped ceiling collapsed. And on top of that, or perhaps because of all that, I had the mysterious gut-pain and concurrent frightening bowel movements, and an insurance plan that was chosen based on the gamble that I would not, in fact, ever get sick.
Things are better now, although I don't feel completely over it. Lo, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and made it to the other side, the memory is still very sharp. But that, in a way, is why I'm here.
Later, a wise friend of mine would remark on the symbolism of having developed a problem in my gut. Literally and figuratively, I was having a hard time digesting everything. I think it was my body telling me that something was very not right, in a way that I couldn't ignore or stuff down or push past like the trooper I am. The tummy trouble is caused by my immune system attacking - responding to the threat of enemies, only there's nothing there but me. I have come to think of it as a very effective early warning system. For me there is still a direct correlation between stressors and gastrointestinal shenanigans, and there may always be. But, as I explained to my mom, in a way this is good because often when my worries get carried away and I get too wound up on the cares of the day, my body gives me what feels like a swift punch in the stomach, and it is often (sometimes) enough to make me stop. Give myself a time out, take my temperature, take a breather, take a nap.
I think of the recent unpleasantness as a turning point for me. It forced me to step back and take a good hard look at myself. What was I enduring all that misery for? A job I didn't like? A world that had become very small and very scary? A life that was so much less than I had the one I had imagined, back when I had let myself imagine anything at all.
One day, when I was balled up on the couch crying, I had enough sense to ask my friend Jo to come over to keep me company. (It's true what they say, that when adversity strikes, you find out who your friends are.) She gently suggested that perhaps now might be a time to look into seeing a counselor. And I did. One thing I am proud of about myself is that even when the world was very very dark and it felt like my back was totally against the wall, I didn't give up on the belief that things could improve. I took my shell-shocked, hopeless, depressed little self to a social worker, in the hope that she could point me to something - ideas, strategies, pharmaceuticals, whatever - that would help life be better. And, slowly, it was. It is.
I have proclaimed this year to be a year of rest and, although I sometimes cringe at the word, healing. I will nurture the fragile broken-winged bird back to life. I have decided that the events of the past are ones that I will use to make me into an awesomer person. I'm still working on exactly how, but well, for starters there's:
-learning your own inner strength, which C---- and I agree is a pretty anti-climactic consolation prize, one that we would give up freely given the choice between that and a life free of pain, suffering and loss. But there you go.
-for another thing, having more compassion for people who are going through a hard time. (And at the same time, oddly, as I have observed with others before, less compassion. "Oh, earthquake victims experiencing some of the most devastating devastation ever? That sucks. Too bad my heart is too stone cold to feel anything more than a passing twinge of regret at this." I will work on this. Eventually.)
-finding out that there are people in your life who completely and totally have your back
- Seething anger with the healthcare and health insurance industries in America.
So anyway, like I said I'm still working on the specifics as to how my hardships will be transformed into a heartwarming and inspirational tale of survival and redemption. Readers are encouraged to write in with suggestions.
But what does any of this have to do with hunger?
Well, for one, I am pleased to report that I get hungry again. Physical hunger, yet another thing to file under the category of "Don't Know What You've Got 'Til it's Gone." (I must also differentiate between hunger and what I felt while undergoing steroid treatment for the colitis. In addition to a chemically induced wit and a remarkable joie de vivre, the steroids made me feel kind of like I was a giant piece of briskly-moving machinery used to clear-cut the rainforest, except that the rainforest was bags of carbs.)
Back when I spent a third of every hour on the toilet clutching myself and groaning, I went through a phase of elaborate bargaining with God or Allah or Jim Henson Creator of All that is Seen and Unseen, or whomEVER, I wasn't in a position to be choosy. I swore that if I lived to eat without pain once again I would do a better job. I would eat real food and go to farmer's markets and make sauces that need to simmer for three days, and stop eating cheese that comes in squeezable form from a foil packet. (I have somewhat made good on this promise, in the sense that I now watch a lot of Food Network while eating squeezable cheeses.)
But the point is, I never knew what a gift it was to be hungry until I wasn't, the same way that it's just not possible to understand what it means to be grateful for your health until you've been sick. There was a tipping point to my illness - and I remember it distinctly, I was balled up on Jo's front stoop on a summer evening unable to enjoy a cocktail - when I realized that I was no longer living. And that is something you don't fuck around with. Jo walked me to the ER that very evening: the first step in a long, infuriating, humiliating, expensive journey toward living again.
Paying hundreds of dollars for medications, having a laproscopic camera shoved up your butt, racking up a five-digit medical bill, crying and pleading with the non-native English speakers answering your insurance company's customer service number, blimping up like a Thanksgiving Day float from corticosteroids, filling a days-of-the-week pill box that's bigger than your Grandpa's was: it makes you think. It makes you think, wow, it is unconscionable that insurance executives are filling their swimming pools with the profits off of my human suffering.
But it also makes you think, what exactly am I fighting for here? A low-paying job that makes me crazy? The chance to come home exhausted and stare numbly at the TV? Two weeks a year plus weekends of reprieve from the drudgery? If you've been wishing there was a pill you could take that would help you get your career choices in perspective, I'm here to tell you, there is and it's called OsmoPrep.
I quit the job. I decided life's too short and suffering is too much of a certainty to voluntarily bang my head against a wall repeatedly for what has been called, to quote from a brilliant film, minor duckets.
Of course, then you are left with the daunting task of discovering what it is, if the rat race is so all-fired unbearable, you really want to do. Which brings me back to hunger. This time I'm not talking about physical hunger, although one might still feel this hunger in the body. Call it desire, longing, yearning, whatever. I think I've had this hunger since I was what, eleven? It's big, amorphous, unspecific. It's probably the kind of thing that gets easily channeled into materialism, the idea that with this next sofa, this next pair of boots or teeth-whiteners I'll finally have It, whatever It is. It's a hunger which for many years I thought would be sated by having a boyfriend who adores me, but in fact I've had a great one for a year so far and...I'm still hungry. Now I think that when I move to a nicer apartment, get a car or a dog, maybe then I'll have everything I want. I imagine hunger like this is what makes people want to be celebrities, get rich quick, star in reality shows.
It's an uncomfortable feeling, in a way. Often I'm able to make enough noise in my head, or become so flummoxed by problems and distractions, that I forget it's even there. But at times when I get halfway clear in my mind, there it is again, and it seems it's never stopped, like a whining or a dull roar, a convection current. Not like a calling or a whisper or anything so articulate. It's just like...an engine rumbling. And it wants something. But what?
I have arrived at the theory that this hunger is not, in fact, bad. Not something to be run from or squashed or stuffed full of high-fructose snacks. Perhaps this hunger, this longing or wanting or what have you, is the feeling of being alive. It's what leads us to desire and seek and move forward in life. Move toward, hopefully, more than away from. It makes me think of the Wupatki Pueblo blowhole. It's this hole, right, naturally occuring in the ground, which for vaguely mysterious geologic reasons, is always blowing a refreshing stream of air up from deep within the earth. I understand the Pueblos ascribed great spiritual significance to it. So - the desire is the rushing air, right, and the idea is not to dig down to find its origin, or try to follow it up to where it dissipates, but just to stand above it and be like, "My, this is rather exhilarating, isn't it." It doesn't lead to anywhere specific. Its source is too deep to fathom. It's just like, there. But not ignorable. Worthy of wonder and symbolizing great cosmic mysteries.
That sort of gets at what I'm getting at. But it will never be gotten at fully, because if it were completely wrapped up tight and understood, what point would there be to keep writing, keep reading, keep waking up in the morning to find out what crazy kooky thing will happen next? Some people might call it a spiritual calling, or the God-shaped hole in the heart, or the creative urge, or the life force, or whatever. And that's cool. It's probably all of those things. I think I'm most comfortable calling it a hunger for meaning, and maybe some other stuff too.
One place to which I have followed this inexplicable hunger is the Celebrant Institute, where I'm learning how to plan and officiate at non-denominational wedding ceremonies. The wedding part was kind of an odd choice for me because generally I'm not like, huge on the whole idea of marriage. It seems like nowadays when fifty per cent of the population is divorced and people get married three and four and seven times, how much does a wedding really mean? This was something I really struggled with, until I had an epiphany: I don't really need to know! I'm going to be an officiant, not some kind of all-knowing marriage guru. Rather than coming to couples as if I have all the answers, I can let them teach me a thing or two about what love means, how it looks, from whence within the majesty of the human heart it comes.
So those two things, in a nutshell, is where the idea for this blog comes from. I want to talk about the impulse to do, well, anything really - the hunger. And I want to record what I learn about this thing we call love, four short letters that belie its breadth and depth and all around bigness. So there you have it: hunger, and love. Love and hunger.
I didn't want to because eating, or more precisely, digestion, caused excruciating pain and some other very unpleasant results. I remember looking at a salad someone at work had brought for lunch and thinking "Aw helllll no!", and starting in on my saltines. My business casual clothes started hanging off of me, but I couldn't enjoy the rapid weight loss because I was scurrying to bathroom every ten minutes like clockwork, doubled over.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was in the throes of what was eventually diagnosed as ulcerative colitis, which is when your colon freaks out for reasons that are not entirely clear to medical science. Another thing that is pretty clear in hindsight but which seemed to escape me at the time, was that I was acutely miserable, and not just because of the problems with the ole' poopshoot.
I was going through what you might call a Bad Time. I was working at a disheartening job, after a bout of unemployment, after having been un-hired in a somewhat unclassy way from a job I'd been working at for five months as a temp-to-hire (minus, apparently, the -to-hire part.) On top of that, each parent, my father one month and my mother the next, had to undergo major operations for life-threatening diseases. Louise, the cat I'd taken in during college and then adopted out to my aunt in order to give her a better life, passed on. On top of that, one day I came home to my apartment and as I opened the door the entire dropped ceiling collapsed. And on top of that, or perhaps because of all that, I had the mysterious gut-pain and concurrent frightening bowel movements, and an insurance plan that was chosen based on the gamble that I would not, in fact, ever get sick.
Things are better now, although I don't feel completely over it. Lo, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and made it to the other side, the memory is still very sharp. But that, in a way, is why I'm here.
Later, a wise friend of mine would remark on the symbolism of having developed a problem in my gut. Literally and figuratively, I was having a hard time digesting everything. I think it was my body telling me that something was very not right, in a way that I couldn't ignore or stuff down or push past like the trooper I am. The tummy trouble is caused by my immune system attacking - responding to the threat of enemies, only there's nothing there but me. I have come to think of it as a very effective early warning system. For me there is still a direct correlation between stressors and gastrointestinal shenanigans, and there may always be. But, as I explained to my mom, in a way this is good because often when my worries get carried away and I get too wound up on the cares of the day, my body gives me what feels like a swift punch in the stomach, and it is often (sometimes) enough to make me stop. Give myself a time out, take my temperature, take a breather, take a nap.
I think of the recent unpleasantness as a turning point for me. It forced me to step back and take a good hard look at myself. What was I enduring all that misery for? A job I didn't like? A world that had become very small and very scary? A life that was so much less than I had the one I had imagined, back when I had let myself imagine anything at all.
One day, when I was balled up on the couch crying, I had enough sense to ask my friend Jo to come over to keep me company. (It's true what they say, that when adversity strikes, you find out who your friends are.) She gently suggested that perhaps now might be a time to look into seeing a counselor. And I did. One thing I am proud of about myself is that even when the world was very very dark and it felt like my back was totally against the wall, I didn't give up on the belief that things could improve. I took my shell-shocked, hopeless, depressed little self to a social worker, in the hope that she could point me to something - ideas, strategies, pharmaceuticals, whatever - that would help life be better. And, slowly, it was. It is.
I have proclaimed this year to be a year of rest and, although I sometimes cringe at the word, healing. I will nurture the fragile broken-winged bird back to life. I have decided that the events of the past are ones that I will use to make me into an awesomer person. I'm still working on exactly how, but well, for starters there's:
-learning your own inner strength, which C---- and I agree is a pretty anti-climactic consolation prize, one that we would give up freely given the choice between that and a life free of pain, suffering and loss. But there you go.
-for another thing, having more compassion for people who are going through a hard time. (And at the same time, oddly, as I have observed with others before, less compassion. "Oh, earthquake victims experiencing some of the most devastating devastation ever? That sucks. Too bad my heart is too stone cold to feel anything more than a passing twinge of regret at this." I will work on this. Eventually.)
-finding out that there are people in your life who completely and totally have your back
- Seething anger with the healthcare and health insurance industries in America.
So anyway, like I said I'm still working on the specifics as to how my hardships will be transformed into a heartwarming and inspirational tale of survival and redemption. Readers are encouraged to write in with suggestions.
But what does any of this have to do with hunger?
Well, for one, I am pleased to report that I get hungry again. Physical hunger, yet another thing to file under the category of "Don't Know What You've Got 'Til it's Gone." (I must also differentiate between hunger and what I felt while undergoing steroid treatment for the colitis. In addition to a chemically induced wit and a remarkable joie de vivre, the steroids made me feel kind of like I was a giant piece of briskly-moving machinery used to clear-cut the rainforest, except that the rainforest was bags of carbs.)
Back when I spent a third of every hour on the toilet clutching myself and groaning, I went through a phase of elaborate bargaining with God or Allah or Jim Henson Creator of All that is Seen and Unseen, or whomEVER, I wasn't in a position to be choosy. I swore that if I lived to eat without pain once again I would do a better job. I would eat real food and go to farmer's markets and make sauces that need to simmer for three days, and stop eating cheese that comes in squeezable form from a foil packet. (I have somewhat made good on this promise, in the sense that I now watch a lot of Food Network while eating squeezable cheeses.)
But the point is, I never knew what a gift it was to be hungry until I wasn't, the same way that it's just not possible to understand what it means to be grateful for your health until you've been sick. There was a tipping point to my illness - and I remember it distinctly, I was balled up on Jo's front stoop on a summer evening unable to enjoy a cocktail - when I realized that I was no longer living. And that is something you don't fuck around with. Jo walked me to the ER that very evening: the first step in a long, infuriating, humiliating, expensive journey toward living again.
Paying hundreds of dollars for medications, having a laproscopic camera shoved up your butt, racking up a five-digit medical bill, crying and pleading with the non-native English speakers answering your insurance company's customer service number, blimping up like a Thanksgiving Day float from corticosteroids, filling a days-of-the-week pill box that's bigger than your Grandpa's was: it makes you think. It makes you think, wow, it is unconscionable that insurance executives are filling their swimming pools with the profits off of my human suffering.
But it also makes you think, what exactly am I fighting for here? A low-paying job that makes me crazy? The chance to come home exhausted and stare numbly at the TV? Two weeks a year plus weekends of reprieve from the drudgery? If you've been wishing there was a pill you could take that would help you get your career choices in perspective, I'm here to tell you, there is and it's called OsmoPrep.
I quit the job. I decided life's too short and suffering is too much of a certainty to voluntarily bang my head against a wall repeatedly for what has been called, to quote from a brilliant film, minor duckets.
Of course, then you are left with the daunting task of discovering what it is, if the rat race is so all-fired unbearable, you really want to do. Which brings me back to hunger. This time I'm not talking about physical hunger, although one might still feel this hunger in the body. Call it desire, longing, yearning, whatever. I think I've had this hunger since I was what, eleven? It's big, amorphous, unspecific. It's probably the kind of thing that gets easily channeled into materialism, the idea that with this next sofa, this next pair of boots or teeth-whiteners I'll finally have It, whatever It is. It's a hunger which for many years I thought would be sated by having a boyfriend who adores me, but in fact I've had a great one for a year so far and...I'm still hungry. Now I think that when I move to a nicer apartment, get a car or a dog, maybe then I'll have everything I want. I imagine hunger like this is what makes people want to be celebrities, get rich quick, star in reality shows.
It's an uncomfortable feeling, in a way. Often I'm able to make enough noise in my head, or become so flummoxed by problems and distractions, that I forget it's even there. But at times when I get halfway clear in my mind, there it is again, and it seems it's never stopped, like a whining or a dull roar, a convection current. Not like a calling or a whisper or anything so articulate. It's just like...an engine rumbling. And it wants something. But what?
I have arrived at the theory that this hunger is not, in fact, bad. Not something to be run from or squashed or stuffed full of high-fructose snacks. Perhaps this hunger, this longing or wanting or what have you, is the feeling of being alive. It's what leads us to desire and seek and move forward in life. Move toward, hopefully, more than away from. It makes me think of the Wupatki Pueblo blowhole. It's this hole, right, naturally occuring in the ground, which for vaguely mysterious geologic reasons, is always blowing a refreshing stream of air up from deep within the earth. I understand the Pueblos ascribed great spiritual significance to it. So - the desire is the rushing air, right, and the idea is not to dig down to find its origin, or try to follow it up to where it dissipates, but just to stand above it and be like, "My, this is rather exhilarating, isn't it." It doesn't lead to anywhere specific. Its source is too deep to fathom. It's just like, there. But not ignorable. Worthy of wonder and symbolizing great cosmic mysteries.
That sort of gets at what I'm getting at. But it will never be gotten at fully, because if it were completely wrapped up tight and understood, what point would there be to keep writing, keep reading, keep waking up in the morning to find out what crazy kooky thing will happen next? Some people might call it a spiritual calling, or the God-shaped hole in the heart, or the creative urge, or the life force, or whatever. And that's cool. It's probably all of those things. I think I'm most comfortable calling it a hunger for meaning, and maybe some other stuff too.
One place to which I have followed this inexplicable hunger is the Celebrant Institute, where I'm learning how to plan and officiate at non-denominational wedding ceremonies. The wedding part was kind of an odd choice for me because generally I'm not like, huge on the whole idea of marriage. It seems like nowadays when fifty per cent of the population is divorced and people get married three and four and seven times, how much does a wedding really mean? This was something I really struggled with, until I had an epiphany: I don't really need to know! I'm going to be an officiant, not some kind of all-knowing marriage guru. Rather than coming to couples as if I have all the answers, I can let them teach me a thing or two about what love means, how it looks, from whence within the majesty of the human heart it comes.
So those two things, in a nutshell, is where the idea for this blog comes from. I want to talk about the impulse to do, well, anything really - the hunger. And I want to record what I learn about this thing we call love, four short letters that belie its breadth and depth and all around bigness. So there you have it: hunger, and love. Love and hunger.
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