well-worn path

Wednesday will be seven months post-surgery.
Even though things changed in ways that I'm sure are permanent, I wondered how long it would be before I began to slip.
I hope the time will come when I can manage to be in love/looking for love and also be completely focused on my own habilitation. I haven't been to temple in weeks - partly because neither Amy nor Robina are there, but that's just an excuse. I'm also lazy. I've never even met Geshe Tenley, so I can't discount his teachings.
My charitable work, aside from monetary contributions, have fallen off.
I have been fairly focused on writing - when I'm at work at least. I think I will have a copy for a select few to read by the end of the month, and that makes me feel proud. I have a long road ahead of me to get to where I want to be.
In so many ways.
I can so suddenly feel so depressed, so frustrated.
Work is going great. Dwindling but now stable caseloads provide me with actual *therapy* clients. I have some clients I love dearly, who are working very, very hard on themselves.
Am I working as hard as they are?
I'm looking at my dresser and the stack of unread books smothered beneath worn but noy-yet-dirty clothes.
Whenever I begin to formally "search" for a mate I immediately find myself aggravated and my self-esteem plummeting. I feel hopeless.
Where did my "I don't need to date, I don't need to look, she's going to come to me" attitude go? I think perhaps when I don't challenge my mind - I don't fill it with meditation and reading and exercise and friends - it daydreams. And my daydreams have always been of a partner. It's only a hair's width between daydreaming and longing.
Problems that I can't solve with determination make me uncomfortable.

It also frustrates me when I can, but continue to focus my determination in ways that will not result in any progress.
I haven't meditated since Vermont.
It's frightening how quickly my thinking shifts, falls back into old familiar ruts, when I become lax in my study.

to the "Million Moms"

I am not choosing to single out your group, as it is a group just like thousands of others. It's just that after hearing the same message thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of times, one grows weary.
Gay children and teens commit suicide at a rate three times that of their heterosexual counterparts. And it is because they are inundated with this message: it's wrong to be you.
Kids who bully are taught to taunt and hate by being awarded this very message as a weapon - the same one that you are so loudly proclaiming in the name of "Christian values."
You can deny your role in these painful deaths. You can say that you do not condemn neither bullying nor self-loathing. You can even say that you're merely speaking the "Lord's truth." But when a child is steeped in the message that their very nature is disgusting, immoral, and something to be hated and feared... the inner turmoil is unimaginable (to anyone who hasn't experienced it, that is).
Heterosexual kids are NOT at risk if all humans are allowed equal rights. But homosexual kids are at risk if they are told time and time again that they do not deserve these human dignities. And in a very, very real way.

I am the type of person who spends every day working with those who are at the lowest points in the lives, trying to make a difference. I am the type of person who cares for her friends and is honest and dependable. I am the type of person who, six months ago, gave a complete stranger one of her kidneys.
I am also a gay person. And because of this I was taught, in same the angry way you are teaching youngsters today, that I am a disgusting, bad person. And I believed it. I didn't understand what I had done to deserve being born as a doomed soul. I fell into such a deep depression that I almost ended my own life on multiple occasions.

Tens of thousands of beautiful people just like me have been through the same thing. And tens of thousands haven't lived to talk about it. Their lights were forever extinguished because of the hatred and pain they felt- because of things they could not change. Things that were not wrong.

So tell me. Is the risk to "the sanctity of marriage," an un-defineable fantasy buzzword, really a bigger risk than the message being received right now, loud and clear by our youth?

Every day approximately 11 people under the age of 25 commit suicide.
That's over four thousand every year. And it's rising.

To the million moms:
100,000 of you have a gay son or daughter.
What are you telling them?

going home

This weekend, after seven long years of East Coast residence, I saw the Rockies again.

My heart started to beat faster as I stepped off the plane into DIA, and looked out to the west at the Front Range. My eyes welled up with tears.
Later in the day I sat atop one of the foothills near the Nelson's house, on a picturesque park bench and looked out at Dinosaur Ridge, Green Mountain, Red Rocks and C-470. I found myself staring at the dry, brittle, straw-like grass. The vibrant yucca and other cacti, flourishing away in the winter, and the chico brush that looked as though it surely must be dead. But it's looked that way for at least seven years. Staring at these things made my heart feel funny.
Even the ground is different. This is the same ground. In the same place where I left it. And I had forgotten all about it.
I flashed back to the house I grew up in. The "back forty" I was ever escaping to.

I focused in on the desert ground with my viewfinder and snapped foolish pictures. I couldn't help it!
As I stepped back into the car with Shawn and Amy, after rushing across the street to snap pictures of a small herd of deer I sighed, "God I'm such a tourist now."
It was all novel now. It was no longer "just" home.

Amy is still the same. Still sweet and funny, smart and loving. More and more the embodiment of her mother. She still calls me Abs or Abigailwilson (in contrast to her father's favorites, Abbycita and Abbers).
She and Shawn still act (or perhaps more than ever act) as though they've been together for two months. The kisses and cooing pet names, the baby-talk voices and lap-sitting. They're madly, beautiful, disgustingly in love. It makes me nauseous... and tearful with happiness.
Next week is their ten year anniversary.

When they talk about the things they've been through together - her year in Paris, his in Wyoming, and their horrible, trying year in dreary Germany - they've been made so much stronger by it. They're patient. They find one another's faults virtuous and endearing. They're mad for each other. And they have been for longer than I've been gone.
I admire it as much as I admire anything in this world.

When I meander through Boulder, a city that could have been tailor-made for me, I miss living here.
But I don't miss the life I had. That wasn't the life I had.
I miss the life I could have had. Could still have, if I want it.

The months of perfect skiing/riding, the "Napa Valley of beer," the prevailing Buddhist culture created by Naropa and the Mind and Life Institute... the museums, the food, the tattoos, piercings and head shops... it's all so me. It's achingly me. It yells "why don't you live here?!" when I walk down the street.

And I sit in a little cafe and think about just this question. Why don't I live there?

I moved to Boston because of the art, the culture, the availability of higher learning. I moved there because it's a great place to be gay, and I want to get married some day. I moved there because I wanted to start over. Reinvent myself. And I wanted to be as far from "home" as I could possibly get.
I moved there because I thought New England sounded like it was so me. And it is. It's all the things I've listed above, and so much more (minus the head shops, which I actually have no use for anyway).
It is me.
And I mean what I've said several times on this trip:
Boston is more "home" to me than any place ever has been.

Even after seven years, each and every time I see the Boston skyline my heart jumps up and down like a giddy child about to go to Chuck E. Cheese. It never stops. It never gets old. I never look up at the Pru or the Custom House or out at the Charles and say "bleh... you again?" Every time, I thank my lucky stars that I live there.

I sit in the cafe and think about the people I love and how, apart from the Nelsons, none of them are here. My college friends have scattered to the four winds, and my high school ties were tenuous even then.

And I think a thought that is "the old me" (but obviously still very much the still-me and forever-me). I think that the woman I am meant to find and love, in that same way that Shawn and Amy love, is more likely in New England than the Rocky Mountains. "Perhaps when I'm married," I say, "If she wants to live here we'll try it for a couple years."
"It could be a nice place to have kids," I say.

Instead of a polarized magnet, always pushing me away from it, Boston still draws me towards it. I ran from Del Norte. I ran from Greeley. I ran from the mountains. I ran from my hurt, I ran from my tears, from my fears. I ran across the plains, through middle-America, up into the Catskills and on to the Atlantic. I ran nearly through my 20's, almost into my 30's.
The truth is, now I am a happy person. I am full of love and joy, and even though I am still working on many other virtues, I know that I could now come back to these places and be truly, deeply, happy.
Maybe... I would like to think... maybe now I could be happy anywhere.

Right now I'm being happy in Boston.
And I am! Can you believe it? I am!

I am so happy.

Sometimes I just have to stop and shake my head. Let my jaw drop in awe.
There is so much waiting for me. There is love and beauty and success and creation and life and life-saving and life-changing. And love. I say that one again. Love. There is more of this than I could ever pray for.

I'm so glad to go home.

that's right, bitches

the omnivore dilemma

Everyone who knows me knows that I love eating meat.
I LOVE it.
Especially red meat. It's one of my favorite things.
I crave it. I have a very difficult time eating even one meal without some sort of meat.
Maybe it's just because of how I was raised. Where I grew up, it would have been a massive joke to be a vegetarian. And "vegan" wasn't even heard of. We figured they were all just weirdo, hippie pansies who wrote emo poems, couldn't play sports and smelled like patchouli... but I figured at least it saved them the trouble of having to tell their parents they were gay.
I had never met anyone who was vegetarian until I went to college, really until grad school. And unfortunately then many of them (even some close friends) were militantly vegan; They were extremely condescending and insulting to people who did not share their beliefs. I became the one, particularly in the lesbian community, who was the weirdo. To them, I was some insensitive barbarian who probably watched NASCAR, ran a cock-fighting ring and skinned kittens for fun. Eating dinner with them doesn't make me want to eat less meat. It just makes me want to talk to them less.
My judgey veggie friends scoff at me when I claim to love animals. I couldn't possibly love them and eat them. I understand how those things seem mutually exclusive. Yet, they're not. I do love them. I don't ever want them to suffer or be mistreated.
But I still want to eat them.
Not all of them, just the cows, chickens and fish... but I even love those ones. And, not that it matters (but somehow in the minds of meat-eaters it does) I'm not the one who killed them. I have killed fish... and worms in the process. I was a kid, and I felt bad about it. Watching them gasp for air was painful. The elderly couple who we called Aunt and Uncle loved to fish with us. To cut short their suffering they would bash them in the head with a rock. I was always shocked to see such bloody violence from such kind and gentle people, but my mother told me it was more humane than letting them suffocate slowly on the stringer like we did.
I've smooshed some bugs and spiders, though not many recently. I accidentally hit a rabbit with my car once. And a couple of birds hit me. Poor aquarium-keeping (despite my very best efforts) killed many lovely saltwater creatures. Other than these, I have not directly killed anything.
I have never killed a cow or a chicken, or a deer or en elk. My father always wanted me to go bow-hunting with him, but I knew I couldn't look into those big brown eyes and let an arrow fly. My militant friends say, and rightly so, that if I want to eat an animal I should have to look it in the face and kill it myself.
If I had to do that... I'm not sure what I would do.
There are certainly people far more suited for killing than I am.

Listening to so many Buddhist lectures forces me to think about my meat-eating. The Tibetan people commonly wear medical masks to avoid accidentally inhaling bugs. You often see them with small brooms, sweeping the path in front of them as they walk so that no ants are inadvertently crushed.
Buddhists believe that every one of the trillions of sentient beings - from mosquitos to krill to germs to ghosts to cows and chickens - has a mind just like we do. The mosquito you swat might be your deceased mother. The cow you kill might be your future son. The dog you adopt could be your mortal enemy. And when you pass away, you better hope you're not reincarnated as one of Colonel Sander's poor, poor chickens.

If I accept this theory of reincarnation, I shouldn't be partaking in anything that encourages the taking of any life. In our society it's pretty difficult to do. The medical treatments we undergo have all been tested on animals. Anesthesia contains eggs. Our sneakers are made from cowhides. Our footballs are made from pigskins. Things like wine, orange juice, chewing gum, toothpaste, tortillas, even "non-dairy" creamer are not vegan. Tattoo ink, beer... not to mention big juicy steaks... none of my favorite things are vegan!
It's kind of a sad realization, but I'm pretty sure I'm never going to want to give those things up.

In my mind, animals eating each other has always been a part of the natural order of the universe. The circle of life and whatnot. I don't think it's wrong.
As a kid, I was taught that animals are sacred. My father refused to hunt with anything other than a bow and arrow. He didn't feel that gun hunting was anything to feel good about. "You walk into the woods and blast a deer to pieces with a shotgun. Where's the sport in that? He doesn't have a chance."
Every year in September my father would kill one deer and one elk, always with his bow and arrow. We usually processed them ourselves, chopping away at the creature on the kitchen table. We neatly packed small steaks in butcher's paper and labeled them in sharpie. For the next year, the meat in the stand alone freezer was what we ate. That, along with the salmon dad would snag all winter after augering through the ice.
Though he was sometimes a bastard, my father believed in treating animals with the same respect that the Native Americans showed them. I learned that from him, and I admired him for it. He taught me that every animal was an important, meaningful creature with a soul. And if one animal is sacrificed to feed another, the animal should be honored in prayer. It should be revered and thanked for it's priceless sacrifice.

Humans are not "the top of the food chain," like many self-righteous carnivores claim. We are simply such destructive creatures that we have removed all natural threats from our habitats (and them from theirs). Place a human in the rainforest, or on the plains of Africa or in the Siberian mountains and we would be a snack within the week. We're slow, weak, we can't see at night, our senses are all sub-par, and we succumb to temperature very quickly. We're flimsy animals, flourishing only because of our brains: our ability to use tools and teamwork. We're not the great kings of the earth. We lucked out.

I believe in showing respect to all animals. I don't think that, under any circumstances, an animals should be abused or neglected. Factory farming is horrifying in the truest sense. Animals are kept in deplorable conditions, tortured and genetically altered in unthinkable ways. That is *wrong*.
And I should not patronize these places.
I've become more aware of the things I eat. Buying organic, locally farmed, cage-free eggs and meats.
I think (all) animals should live a happy life while they are alive and die painlessly when they die. Hey, that's all I ask for.

Am I going to stop eating meat? No. I don't want to. Does that make me unable to be a Buddhist? Maybe it does. I'm sure it would to anyone who considers themselves devout.
But that won't deter me from trying to be a good Buddhist and a good person. And I suppose I can still do many things to minimize the damage I do in the world.

an instant

meditation by ~bthslayr on deviantART

the venerable vulnerable

Tonight Venerable Robina touched briefly upon something I have been struggling intensely with. The idea of love vs. attachment.

I have loads and loads of attachment (as most of us around here do). I’m attached to my television and vehicle and computer and phone and computer games and the internet and my favorite foods and to possessions that I don’t even remember I have until I open the boxes at the back of the closet. All these things I look at and say, gosh, I’m not sure I could do without that…

I attach very intensely to people. Very intensely. It feels reckless and volatile. Probably because it is. I extend myself and my hopes and my notions so far that it leaves little room for reality. For likelihood, even. I set myself up for heartbreak.

I attempted to ask a question, or perhaps just make a comment, but did such a poor job formulating it that Robina became agitated with me (as she does). The whole thing – which seems as though it should be a simple notion – confuses me so that I can’t even express a coherent thought.
She construed my words much differently than I intended them, and deduced that I have a hard time feeling love for others. Which is not the case.
Love, as she defined it, is having the thought “may you be happy.” Instead, she said, we commonly use love as “may you be happy as long as you make me happy.” I don’t struggle terribly with this.
Everyone that I have ever loved, in any capacity, I still love. I don’t care if they wrong me or hurt me or betray me or cause me feel to jealous or angry. No matter what they have done to me – and people have hurt me terribly – I still wish them well. And, if presented with the opportunity, I would do (and presently do) whatever I can to assist in their happiness.
I think of Lisa, my first love, and how viciously she devastated me. I feel that her actions were cruel and unwarranted. They wounded me at such a tumultuous time in my life that I almost gave up on life itself. I was jealous of her life-to-be with the man she loved, and it was unbearable to look at them.
But I truly, deeply, wished for her happiness. She deserved her happiness and I would never have done anything to impede or derail it.
I do not have difficulty feeling love for people who have hurt me.
I do not even have difficulty feeling genuine love for people who just plain don’t want me.
Even if what will make them happy is *not being with me*… and I feel as though I might just die if they will not be with me… I genuinely want them to be happy.

If it makes them happy, I want them to be without me. Sometimes I have had to remove myself to make this happen, all the while feeling as though it might kill me. If forced to choose between my own happiness and the happiness of someone I love, I would choose theirs every time.

So, what then is my struggle?
I want to be happy too.

It feels as though attachment is necessary to love.
Being “in love” with someone, in my mind, means needing them. It means wanting them. Desiring them. Feeling as though you can’t live without them and your life would just not be as fulfilling if you were to lose them.
It is all achingly, illogically, tragically Bohemian – this I know. I have an attachment to that manner of thought as well, but that’s another matter!

If I feel that all this is a key component of love, I guess the next logical step is to define what it means to me to “have” someone.
Which is a good question. We all know, logically, that we can never "possess" someone. They are not ours, just like we are not theirs.
Having, I suppose, is a commitment. A contract of sorts. Having them is having their promise.

Though Robina didn’t answer my question at all, she set me off on thinking about my attachment – what my attachment really is.
I began to follow the train of thought, scribbling furiously in my notebook as others asked more coherent questions.

My thoughts about “what love is” are a reflection of what *I* want. What I desire.
I desire to be desired.
I want to be wanted.
I want my partner to feel as though they need me, and my partnership.

I do not want them to feel as though they can’t live without me, as that would be dangerous to them (should I expire first or our relationship end).

But I, to quote Cheap Trick, want you to want me.
Why? What does it give me?
Security.
If you need me and want me, then surely you won’t leave me.
If you don't leave me, I will be safe.
If you need me, I will feel useful.
If I feel useful, I will feel good about my life.
If you want me, I will feel attractive.
If you want me, others will see how loved I am.

If you need me then I have worth.
I am not worthless.

If you know you will be fine in either case, you might not put up with me. You might not be willing to work as hard on “us.” You might just get bored and wander off to see what else is out there.
If you are not attached me, you might not stay very long.

If you are not attached me, you do not really want me.

If you love me, you might let me go when you think it’s better for me. (and you might be right)
If you are not enlightened, you might not know what is better for me. Or you might let me go out of self-deprecation.
I might not (very likely not, at the moment) know what is better for me.

These words are all difficult to write.

It is even more difficult to think that wanting someone to want me is not wanting someone to be happy... No matter how good I think I would be for/with them. Wanting to force my will upon someone because it will reassure me about myself and somehow tidy up my past... is not what is best for that person.
And therefore....
it is not love.

My attachment is not love.

Because it is intense and romantic and dramatic and filled with notions of forever and giving and protection and damsels in distress and knights in shining armour I think that it is love.

But it is a small abused child wanting comfort and wanting security.
It is laziness, wanting easy approval from without instead of difficult approval from within.
It is a reflection of someone who has witnessed precious little love, but copious amounts of attachment.
It is lies that I did not even know were lies.
Lies that I cannot be blamed for.

There is no blame here, just light where there once was dark.

The deeper I go into the darkness, the more I yearn for the light.