Lion and Magic Boy

I quietly fell apart today over the vacuum cleaner, weeping there on the unvacuumed livingroom floor with the vacuum cleaner in pieces spread out around me, mocking me. I cannot get the damned thing back together, having taken it apart to an extent I have done dozens of times before as part of its regular cleaning and maintenance. Now the thing glints at me evilly and refuses to fit back together, one important element somehow having mysteriously grown too large to fit back into its shell.

Maybe that’s my problem too.

I am tired of this, tired of having no one to turn to when I need help, of having no complementary strength to share and rely upon when needed.

I am so fucking lonely it hurts.

The other day Eric reached out and gently and affectionately touched the top of my head, and that touch was so achingly familiar yet so distant that I looked around, convinced there was someone else in the room. It hit me that save for a few days over the past several months, a few magical yet fleeting days, I haven’t felt touch like that in a very long time.

And what I thought was there, what I thought I was moving toward, may not be there at all. Some things simply vanish into illusion when you reach for them, even though you know with the reaching that they await you. I know deep down that it’s more like catching a butterfly, or better yet a hummingbird, something so ephemeral that the merest breath will send it shooting off in another direction. In the end all you can do is wrap an invitation around you and wait. But seeing what lies 2400 miles away from me through the thin but undeniably opaque glass of the screen on my laptop is nearly impossible. I feel with my heart and with every fiber of my being, and then in the reaching destroy the illusion I have built to match the feeling. Between us stretches a gossamer thread that is so incredibly fragile yet strung with the combined weight of the past and the future which threatens to pull it down altogether.

So there is nothing behind me and nothing in front of me. There is nothing but me, suspended alone in space and darkness. There is no one but me, and I feel too tiny, too weak, too ephemeral myself to buoy myself any longer. Worse, there are three incessantly needy little people depending upon me to have some semblance of put-togetherness when I just don’t have any for anyone, not for myself or for them or for anyone.

I am a shell, and my inside no longer fits what I have erected around it.

This afternoon I enticed Eric into his stroller and we went for a long walk. I was hoping to walk away some of the fear, some of the pain, to find balance there, to find my stride again. Instead, I found that more than anything, I simply wanted to just keep walking. I found myself thinking about those women who go out for a walk and keep walking, who go out for a drive and then just keep driving. The allure of simply disappearing, of walking out of one life and into another, was incredible.

I could do that, I whispered to myself. I would do that. I would have, too, maybe, under other circumstances. Not today.

Instead I found myself doing what I predicted I would, putting one foot in front of the other, taking step after step. My dad told me once that walking is really a controlled fall. So I fell, slowly, back to the house, washed off a little of the pain, then made a dinner I couldn’t eat and once again put away the pain and immersed myself in the moment.

When I was in junior high or maybe high school I wrote a story called “Darkness Reigns”. I liked the play-on-words aspect of the title, but I’m pretty sure the story sucked.

Why that came to me just now I’m not quite sure. However. I was going to write about last Saturday, a day I pretty much just spent crying. Which is somewhat perplexing to children, which is why I’m glad I just remembered that they weren’t here that day. See? A day spent in a black hole. Fun!

I managed to scribble some thoughts down that day, thoughts that evolved into a sort of conversation, in my beloved Moleskine journal, a gift to myself that begins with its first entry on January 6, 2007: I choose joy. That was a pretty huge thought for me at the time and it was important to write it down so I’d remember it, so used to wallowing in my fears and shortcomings as I was. Choosing joy seemed like a logical, if not unattainable, step, but then something happened: hey, I found it! It was here all the time!

But it’s not like I live there, in joy.

You know, I say that, write it, and immediately I hear a conflicting message (hey, I’m a channel, after all; I have connections, dude):

If you think of Joy, like every other human emotion and every other State of Being, as a spectrum, and embrace the fullness, the totality, of that emotion or state, then yes, you do indeed AT ALL TIMES live in joy. The difference lies ONLY in your perception. if you choose to perceive Joy as a state that only allows goodness, or “positive” aspects, then you are denying a part of that state and in so doing deny a part of yourself. By embracing the totality of every state, you open yourself up for the receipt of its complete energy, and this in turn will provide your life with a richness you do not as yet experience. EVERYTHING has an entirety; it is up to you to find a way to see and embrace that entirety instead of relying on limitations.

So my crisis on Saturday had a lot to do with the template of The Mistress of Self-Deception that I’ve chosen in this life to employ. Actually, its name is Self-Deprecation, but deception surely is also an apt description. When I’m fully in this state, it affects EVERYTHING, like I’ve donned the Special Extra-Dark Glasses of Half-Emptiness with which to view everything. I’ve always alternately fought this and wallowed in it.

But you want to know what I wrote, don’t you? A peek inside my super-secret personal journal? That I’ve never shown to anyone? That until now no one even knew existed? Hell, yes!

Here we go, then: [edited somewhat, sorry]

***********

Impatience plays strongly here, along with self-dep. They frolic together: the unfairness!

Fears of missing out because I am not good enough. Irony? Maybe.

So I am asking for guidance here, asking for help in letting go of my fears. It comes to me as I write this that first I must face them, must walk right into them. Must name them. All right, then. I will.

1. I am afraid that people will look at me and find me lacking.

But I have been told, many times, that when someone looks at me they see perfection, perfection that includes all those fears. Just as I see them.

So what is causing me to doubt this? Why don’t I believe it? What more must I look at here?

Its not about extinguishing self-dep, banning it, but about acknowledging it and embracing it.

OK then.

2. I am afraid that I haven’t got anything of consequence on my own, that I must derive my self-worth through someone else’s eyes. Because I am afraid to find it on my own, afraid that I will look and there will be nothing. It’s easier to rely on someone’s else’s admittedly faulty view of you then to face what you might see, or not see, on your own.

[that was painful to state. many tears.]

I am afraid I can’t live up to my own impossibly high standards. They are set so high I will almost certainly fail, which means I can be afraid to try. Which means I can rely on someone else.

How do I heal this?

Walk through it and embrace it. it is a part of you, and as such it is just as beautiful and perfect as the parts of yourself you present to others.

That way you could relax this ever-present attention you have to who and what you have crafted. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to remember that all the time?

[more tears here, many of them]

But who am I?

You are everything you have ever thought or dreamed. You are larger than ever you thought possible.

I am afraid people won’t like me.

If you do everything with the thought of doing so to please someone else, you are not being true. And people will notice. And *that* they won’t like.

Be true and people will like you for your trueness.

***********

So I wrote that, channeled parts of it (the italics!), continued to wallow for a few hours, but by nighttime felt lighter. It all makes perfect sense to me, the words that came in response to my fears, but my natural inclination is to then DO something about it. Formulate a Plan! Implement the Plan! But I really don’t know where to go with it.

I’m going to rely instead on a notion I picked up many years ago. I believe that everything, of course, possesses an energy, maybe even a life, of its own. Everything. So you can be affected by the energy of, for instance, words. I came to this when I examined the books I was reading. They seemed to come in waves, themes, each one connected somehow to the one before and the one I read after it. I began to feel as if I was somehow being guided in my book choices, that I was obtaining an education of sorts. I really think I was. Am.

Taking this a step further, I believe, too, that sometimes, simply possessing a book can impart its energy to you. I used to buy all sorts of books on healing when I was on a spiritual quest some years back. I was searching and searching, gathering information and sifting through it, to eventually develop the spiritual beliefs and practice I use now (which is still, of course, an evolving creation). Often I’d read a chapter or two and then feel I was done with the book. I had gotten what I needed, and the rest was simply available through the book’s energy.

Either that or I’m too damned IMPATIENT to read an entire book.

Nah. it’s the other thing.

So, thinking about that, I’m thinking that it’s the energy in the act of writing, the act of reading over the words (and now I have reinforced them yet again by blogging them!) that will have the effect. I can simply relax a bit, then, and allow change to flow to and around and through and within me.

I’ll post an update at the end of the month.

***********

If you find wisdom for yourself in my journey, I’m delighted! Please post a comment here or a link to me, and feel free to share a link to me with anyone you think might benefit from the information. I certainly don’t pretend to have many of the answers, but I welcome anyone who is also searching, and I’m happy to be able to share the elements of my journey with all of you.

Also, as you can see from the conversational aspects of what I posted above, the channeling I do is a form of therapy. If you or anyone you know is interested in healing work, it’s very possible I can help, and I can gear sessions to the recipient (it’s not necessary to know about the spiritual system I work with, but an openness and a sense of self-awareness are very very helpful). LightSpring Transformations.

I still get the darker times, just not very often these days. It’s hard to believe that I used to live here. I don’t quite know what to do about them, the darker times, except wait for them to go away. One thing builds upon another, and eventually I am rendered immobile.

And the loneliness is terrifying, yet the feeling of immobilization makes it impossible to reach out.

And sleep doesn’t come.

It’s, apparently, hiding in the same place as humor and confidence and creativity. Don’t worry, they’re all in there somewhere, and they’ll be back on the surface again. Eventually.

But sleep. Doesn’t. Come.

There’s been a hard edge to me lately. It’s come out in my writing, and I don’t think I like it.

It’s there with the children, too, a glimmering wash of impatience in the toys left out, the mud tracked in, the fighting, the “not me!” responses to fruitless queries about who scattered candy wrappers, who didn’t fill the water bottle, who will help clean up Eric’s toys.

I know it’s there, and I don’t like it.

I thought I had found ways to excise this from me, simply from knowing that I can choose otherwise. Yesterday morning, after spending some days in this darkness, I found light again and thought it was there to stay. This is what I wrote to Michael about it, thanking him for the apparent energy work he had been doing on my behalf:

I didn’t really think to notice until I got outside, taking Eric to the bus. He waved happily bye-bye to me, both inside the bus after I buckled him in and outside as I stood on tiptoes so he could see me through the window.

Then I turned around and hoisted the empty trash container onto the curb and began wheeling it back behind the house.

I noticed how my breath sent out white puffs. I noticed that the frost on the grass was hard and crunchy underfoot and that it sparkled a little in the sunlight. I felt the warmth of the sun and looked at the sky, a thin film of whitish cloud covering the blue. I felt how my muscles stretched, contracting and lengthening, as I walked and pushed the trash container. I wanted to stay outside, to walk and feel the energy from the earth, from the sun, soak into me.

I realized then what I was feeling, what had been lacking for a few days: joy.

It was as if a heavy dark cloud had lifted from me, the one that colors everything black or at least a dull brownish-gray like the color of smog hanging in the sky, a dirty unloved color and for good reason, one that chokes out life and makes you want to crawl back into some little hole and retreat from everything.

Although I couldn’t go for more of a walk to let that feeling in more fully, I knew it is still there regardless. And I knew that one of its sources was you.

Earlier this month, I took a fresh Moleskine notebook, my very first ever, and decided to chronicle the transformation I had decided to bring about within myself this year. The very first words I wrote were:

I choose joy

Even through the blackness that descends like a cloud sometimes, I still believe that I have the power to create my own reality. I have written about this before. I truly believe it, and I know too that doing so, making sweeping grand changes and creating a whole new you, a whole new world, is as easy as flipping a light switch.

It really is. I know this, like I know breathing.

Yet I also know that the other part of it, what can be so difficult about it, is believing that there is a light switch.

I’ve been working hard at some of these changes. In times past when the darkness descended and I found myself wandering cold and alone in an empty dark cave, I would stay there for days, weeks, sometimes months. There were times when I doubted there ever had been anything but the cave, because it had been so long since I had seen sunlight, and I could no longer remember what it looked like, what it felt like. Gradually, though, the harsh red anger and the deep black despair would slowly turn into lighter and happier shades, perhaps never truly bright, but at least not as oppressively dark.

Now, when this feeling descends, I recognize that in some perverse way I welcome it. It has been with me so long and has become familiar, its familiarity feeling almost like home. The alternative, the true me, is less familiar, and we are trained from infancy to fear the unknown. Still, at these times I have begun to hear words like: You don’t own this, Karen. This isn’t you. Let it pass through you and it will be gone. It doesn’t belong to you.

I hear this and I am comforted. I remember that there is a sunlight as well as a cave, and I am more content to simply allow the changes, even as I chafe under my impatience to enact change.

Michael tells me to ask it its name, but I have been afraid to do this. What if its name is me? What if I truly am that? Hearing that would be devastating, but I know that one day I will feel strong enough to ask, and that may be the day it comes for the last time.

[tags]depression, transformation, joy[/tags]

Today, Michael, my Michael, left to return to Colorado.

This has been in the works for perhaps ten days now, though really when I look back he never really moved here to Pennsylvania at all, not in spirit.

I cannot overstate how much he hated it here, and it affected our relationship profoundly. There’s a whole lot more to it all, of course, and this is the Cliff Notes version, but you get the idea.

So how this long-distance thing for us will work out in the end is anybody’s guess, and meanwhile it looks like I’ll be spending a lot more time alone than I have in years and years. In fact, it’s been 13 years since I was alone for any appreciable time, but with the children with The Ex for their 50% each month, it looks like I’ve got a lot of time to fill.

After Michael drove away this afternoon with Mickey in his rented moving truck, I did what anyone would do.

I vacuumed.

Then I went to IKEA.

Now I have lots of things to assemble and I can’t even begin to tell you how very weird it was to come home to a totally empty house. No children, no mate, no pet even (Serena has already hit me up for a potential kitten with Mickey leaving but that hasn’t happened yet), just silence.

It’ll be interesting finding me again.

I’ll keep you posted.

Recently Michael and I had some soul-searching talks wherein we discussed how we saw our relationship and each other, and what roles we wanted to play. I was shocked and appalled to hear him say that he’s been considering this idea of mine of getting back into property management, probably commanding a pretty sum for my services even after 11.3 years of inactivity, and the mere thought of him being the House Dad and doing all that I’ve been doing for those past 11.3 years gives him the willies and, and as he put it, would kill him.

Well.

(and what’s it done to me?)

Which leads me to wonder if, indeed, I could land such a position. Would anyone want to employ me after 11 years of mommyhood?

For all my education, coming entirely I might add from reading books, several truckloads of them, I have no actual college degree. (I have three degrees of Reiki, but that doesn’t count, at least not that way. And I’m sure I have six or fewer degrees of separation with most if not all of you, but that again is something else.) Nope, I left my pursuit of a Theater Arts degree knowing that there was a lot of competition out there, a lot of talent, and it wasn’t simply talent that was going to get me anywhere. The odds were stacked, I felt, and running scared, I ran away with my student loan mid-semester (yes, they did catch up with me eventually, in case you are considering this) to begin a rewarding career in Telephone Sales, a natural choice.

My last husband, who has pretty much soured me on the idea of marriage entirely despite my usually idealistic outlook, observed once that it appeared to him that I never had finished anything in my life.

That may help explain a conversation which led straight to the current state of things, i.e. an extremely bitter and messy divorce, wherein he told me it was his opinion that a wife who didn’t work during the course of the marriage, choosing instead, as he put it, to sit around eating bon-bons, deserved markedly less of the hard-working husband’s hard-earned income from the time during said marriage than did said overworked and underacknowledged husband.

Which is interesting to ponder as I find myself in a position whereupon a judge who has never met me and doesn’t know a thing about me, will decide indeed what I am worth. This process, euphemistically called “Equitable Distribution”, means that the worth of the marriage will be split somehow between us, most likely by some predetermined calculation (which admittedly puts a non-working spouse such as myself to a slight advantage), but one skewed as much as possible by my husband’ likely exhortations of what is His and what was Ours. In other words, it will be decided in court What I Am Worth.

Another measure of a person’s worth, at least where we deal in the sophistication of money and power rather than in cows and cowrie-shell necklaces, which sounds much more civilized to me, is one’s job (and inherently, the money and power that rides along with it). I have none. That makes me a ….. what? I write a blog, so therefore am I A Writer? Must it be for money to earn a label? I would love to write for money, but so would at least 700,000 other people. I channel, I do Reiki, but are these worthwhile pursuits in our society?

I don’t care how many granola bars and pots of soup a person makes for her family, those things do not hold up to the general populace as Worthwhile and Worthy, unless they are mass-produced and mass-marketed and consumed en masse.

Internet, what are YOU worth, and how do you justify your worth to yourself and to others?

(Crawling back now to my Dark Hole of Depression.)

technorati tags: work, divorce, personal worth, prozac, anyone?