Making Peace

It is a beautiful day today here in So. Cal, after 3 PM, and I haven't left the house, except for some time out on the patio to write and laze.  

I'm not sure if I'm trying as hard as I can to heal my body, even as I realize the fallacy of such an idea - I must surrender to the flaccidity of MS when I feel too wobbly to take a walk, and if I create stress and dissatisfaction because of that, then I get to be stressed and dissatisfied as well..

I walk with a cane, now, mostly, which gives me a sense of stability.  I am grateful to have surrendered to this need to support myself.  It reminds me to slow down and be mindful in every step (when I remember to use it).

All is not grim.  I've always felt myself to be better suited to a different century/culture/country, and, while I'm still here in Long Beach, 2013, things feel different to me now.  It's my third act, I am 60 years old, nearer to completion, a little more so each day,  (although I don't really feel that way except in my body).  The Buddhist concept of the dharma allows for this time of life for the elders to put aside their worldly concerns and focus on spirit. 

What would it be like if I did not feel any guilt or sorrow about any of this?  Partly, it could be the pleasure of sitting on my bed (made - this seems important) with the cats, and making an effort to fulfill a commitment I made to myself (writing).  Maybe I could be hearing, instead of that voice of shame and doom, an inner voice that encourages me, saying things that are loving and supportive, telling me that I do have something to say. 

It's interesting that the only times I feel absolutely free of guilt is when I think I might be dying.  Then, I can perforate time, I can believe that I am not what I do, that I am not my body, and that I am worthy of love.  But, without that monstrous foe to fight, I find myself back in the mundane world of the body, of scarcity and lack of power.  

Not coincidentally, I am reading Carolyn Myss "Why People Don't Heal and How They Can".  She talks about how much power there is in illness, how much extra credit you get, how often you are the center of attention. I had a reading when I was first diagnosed with my second episode of breast cancer, in which I was told "you don't have to get sick to give yourself what you need".   I am still learning this, in fact it may be the lesson I am here to learn/teach.

For a long while, I could not write, because all I wanted to say was how much I hated MS and cancer; how angry I was to have been chosen to deal with this, (as if we have control in these matters) and the unfairness of it all.  But, like the man said, "if you want fair, go to Pomona".  When I can write about my illnesses as gurus, as parameters I have to live by, they become  my fiercest teachers.

This isn't what I had in mind.  But here it is anyway.

Out Beyond Fear

Who am I, in this moment, today, now?

How about now, who am I now?  And now?  And now?   How is it that my thoughts can go dark and then clear again?  Which is the "real" me?

A lot of facts(?) surround me –  a lot of voices speak in my head.   Some of these were voices not previously known to me, because, in my zeal to appear normal and average, I worked at stifling the unusual thoughts that came into my head, thinking they were the mutterings of a not normal person - a mute with Tourette syndrome.

I was encouraged in this belief about myself in various ways, and one was that at the age of 15, I was hospitalized for something that I would now describe as an anxious, acute, major depression.  It turned me into a nervous, pacing, sleepless and unproductive person I could barely recognize.  My parents, who were having their own problems, put me into a psychiatric hospital, where I was given enough thorazine to to wipe me out and make me compliant.

There are a lot of details I won't go into here, but there was a lot of rebuilding to be done when I got out of the hospital and returned to my life.  I am proud of the 16 year old who saw she was about to get dumped in a "tutoring school", which was essentially where people with dysfunctional kids, and a certain income level put their crazy, uncontrollable t
eenagers.  Except I had decided to not be one of those, and enrolled in an accelerated,  HS diploma night school to make up some of the time lost in the hospital, which would eventually put me in a normal school, with normal dysfunctional kids.

But before that happened, I'd already had my introduction to psychotropic drugs, specifically antipsychotics, which we given at doses sufficient to keep us all dopey and vacant.
This may have been considered reasonable from a medical point of view, as zombies are easier to control, but I question it's value for me who, whatever else I might have had going on, was never psychotic.

I left this place, at the age of 16, after 9 months, not due to any claims of a cure, but because I had become an incorrigible patient.  I had been introduced to pot and amphetamines, as well as barbiturates, while in the hospital; it was, in fact, the raiding of the barbiturate closet was the action that got me, and a few others, kicked out, the charge being "abuse of the facility".

This is one of the earliest of the stories I have formed into a life.   Often I am able to casually just toss it off,  minus the remorse, the blame, the judgment, and whatever else came along when it was all going on.  When you've censored your life into the images you think are normal, (because you definitely are not), you  can forget who you are.

We all have our stories.  

Coming Out

After years of avoiding the dormant writer inside me, I find myself left with no choice but to seek her out and encourage her to speak.  I'd hoped for more altruistic reasons, but what it comes down to is that the knot in my heart forces me to speak or implode.

When I was in grade school I was a precocious writer, and I wrote cute little poems which my teachers made much of, which was embarrassing, but not entirely.  In second grade I won the Poet of the Month contest, based on published writing in the school paper - The Chatterbox.

At the other end of the spectrum -  home - I had begun to use writing to express the despair I was feeling as my family was falling apart,  loudly and sloppily.  What I  wanted most at that time was to be a hippie, but was a couple of years too young for the late 60s.  I made up for some lost time in the 70s, when one of my goals was to try to use very drug there was in New York City.

Since I'd gone to a progressive high school, not much was made of conventional life planning.  I decided to delay college (with little opposition).  I like to think I would have done that differently, with the benefit of hindsight, but maybe not.

But, getting back to the silenced one, it has taken some extreme life circumstances to get me to let her loose and speak her truth, after a lifetime of censorship.  There are some strong currents at work in opposition as well, which I often mistake for the reasonable voice of self-discretion, which can shut me up really fast.  It feels extremely unnatural to me to open myself to these feelings, when, for so much of my life I have judged them as unacceptable.  But then, that wasn't working so well either...

So now, I set an intention to open to myself to lost, young girl, to listen when she speaks, without the judgement and criticism with which I have always scared her away.

Recently, I was invited to write from the part of me who has committed to living and learning for all these years, developing self responsibility and, yes, wisdom, and to write it as if I really believed what I was saying.  No self abnegation, no doubt,  only my well considered words put into the void.

I hope.

It's a C Minus World

This title is not my own, and I'm not exactly sure who originated the phrase.  It came to me through a much-loved and respected teacher, and it surprises me that, every time I've used it in conversation, it seems to be something previously unthought of and possibly irreverent.

The other thing that surprises me is that (most) people are capable of attacking themselves fiercely when they find themselves at odds with this C minus world.  It's frustrating: stuff breaks, technology does not cooperate, the mediocre on-line banking site is not doing what it's supposed to.  Brains age and forget, bodies eventually die, it is the nature of things.

For a long time, I though that I was the only C minus, and that the rest of the world was at least a B+.  The problem seemed to be that I was too thin skinned, or just not tough enough.   The fact that I spent much of my youth and young adulthood in Manhattan, and worked in the garment industry did nothing to dissuade me from that belief.

I've been working on it, at denying that voice, that says everything has to be perfect or I am a failure. with a big fierce and consistent NO.  That is all I want to say to that voice.  And then, I want to relax into the silence that comes when that voice stops talking, and listen for what happens.

Remembering

As I seek to find the peace within myself, I encounter many obstacles.  One of the most persistent is that it doesn't seem like I am really "doing" anything.   I suppose that what that I really mean is that I'm not earning any money, or being otherwise visibly productive, this being the outcome of two bouts of breast cancer with complications, and then a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

I don't really have an answer, anymore, to the question "what do you do?".  I  have a hard enough time with ""how are you?".

For many years, the rhythm of my life took place around my work as a bodyworker. I had the good fortune  of doing something that I loved, I was the master of my time,, and my life felt more congruent than ever before.  Even though I worked from home, work involved people, so  I never felt isolated.

I had always longed for work that would benefit others, as well as pay my bills, so, for many years, while my body was strong, I derived deep satisfaction from this part of my life.

When my health made this no longer possible, the loss was many faceted.  My work was satisfying, it gave me independence, and I never stopped being amazed at the healing power of touch.  But something else had became obvious to me - I was a wounded healer - I took care of the bodies of others, often, at the expense of my own.

When this manifested as actual illnesses, it felt as if my emotional wounds had become visible.  After I had my mastectomies "for real" (when the implants had to come out because of multiple infections), this felt literally to be true.

I don't mean to not say that touching others caused my exhaustion (or my illnesses), but I can see now that it is possible to be more discerning about where, and how, we share this energy with each other. I didn't get it then, that, with my longing to be adored by others, I was giving away the store of my body.

Today, I still have gifts.  The loss of my body's strength, at first, felt like the worst thing I could imagine.  But, I can still thank the Universe, God, the Force, whatever, for my ability to express myself with words, and I can cultivate that ability, knowing how I have been healed by the words of others many times.  But first, I have to remember.  As I re-read this paragraph I realize how constant the act of remembering must be.

I

As my MS is finding me home more than ever, I have begun to write and share what I write with others.  E-mails to friends were the seeds of this effort.  And since the words of others have brought me so much comfort, I ask that the Angel of Words be with me here, so that my words might do the same for someone who needs to hear them.  MS opens a lot of windows, even as it closes many doors, and the pain it causes is mitigated somewhat by its insistence that you be slow and mindful in every step of your life.  For a long time practicing yogi, this is a desirable state.  And so this can be seen as a gift.

May I be safe

May I be peaceful

May I be kind to myself

May I accept myself as I am

May I accept my life as it is.

The above was presented as a meditation for self compassion for people with MS, and can be done while sitting or lying comfortably, with one or both hands at the heart.   MS demands a number of things from its hosts, which can be summed up as the need to become slow and mindful.  Because, if you're not slow and mindful, you might fall down and get hurt, and the collateral damage can get scary.  

But the world is very fast, and most of us here in the slow lane, be it due to aging or failing health, are aware of an effort to keep up.  With what?

I recently received an e-mail from a friend who is 80 years old and very wise, and the gist of what she said was that we have forgotten what love really is, and that, in so doing, we are capable of crucifying ourselves on a daily basis.  In a way, this has been the drumbeat of humanity, and we accept it as our lot, but says who?  There is a line in a Leonard Cohen song that says: "You can strike up the march, there is no drum".  It is an act of courage to be here, an act of courage to remove the nails from the palms of your hands.  And what about the wounds?  What about those other people who are going so much faster?

Previously, for me, self compassion meant consciously saying NO to the harsh, critical voice with which I always spoke to myself.   This was a big first step: recognizing that voice for what it was, (an opinion, and a mean and biased one, at that).   It is not the voice of truth, and it is most certainly not the voice of love.  I believe that the obedience to that voice that was a factor in the development of my MS - it quite literally fried my nerves.

This recognition (of the cruelty of that inner voice) helped for a while, but it was a little vague, and while it restrained me from my habitual mean thinking, there was a silence to be filled.  Sometimes Om Namah Shivaya was enough - saying the name of the god Shiva, the destroyer - asking for the removal of obstacles within me.  This is my mantra, Om Namah Shivaya, and sometimes I have to shout it out at the top of my mind because everything else gets so loud and chaotic.

 We all are so starved for compassion, it's not just me and people with MS.   In a talk on self compassion the   the presenter broke down the actual process of self compassion, which consists of three parts: 1. suspending self-anger, interrupting the habitual thought flow (usually some form of judgment)  long enough for something else to enter in.  Only then can we have a different experience from the one we've been used to, which allows the practice of loving kindness toward oneself to come into being;  2. recognizing the common humanity in our experience.  I like to imagine how I would speak to someone who is not me, but who is in a similar situation. I would never be so scathing.  If everyone is deserving of compassion, if all of humanity is limited and fragile, then so am I.   I am not the exception to these truths, and am therefore deserving of compassion; and 3. mindfulness, which is nonjudgemental  and clear seeing of what is happening.  This is required on what may as well be a constant basis.

And so I offer loving kindness to myself, because today feels hard and I am in it and it is what I would offer another, (I hope).  

Still, am I withholding comfort from myself when a friend texts later on and asks if I feel like company?  Tonight I say no, because I've had a hard time of things today and I don't feel like putting my best face forward.  I'm tired and I need quiet.  

Maybe tuning out is the biggest fault of humans - we are given a brain with which to think, and then we turn it against ourselves or tune it out.  We spend so much energy trying to be what is expected, and there is no drum.  What have I been hearing?