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.

all in good time

This year, as the clock ticks down the final hours in December, I'm not making resolutions.
Last January I wrote the following:

This year I will spend more time being gracious. This year I will spend time reading things things for fun and learning to meditate. This year I will complete a 60-mile marathon, and go on a silent vipassana retreat. I will listen to music I've never heard and spend more time looking at the ocean. I will laugh more and watch more movies. I will take more mini-vacations. I will take more bubble baths and use the outside grill more. I will enjoy the little things. I will create something beautiful as often as possible, and I will take every opportunity to extend respect and friendliness to those in need. I will spend more time looking at the moon and stars. I will do things I've never done before. I will care for my friendships.
I will care for myself.

I don't know that I spent more time being gracious. I read a little for fun, but only a little. I did (better) learn to meditate. I did not partake in the 60-mile, as I failed both my fundraising and training goals. I may have laughed more... but I don't think I used my Netflix account at all. I moved into a house were bubble baths were naught and I used the grill only once. I haven't gone on a silent retreat (yet), but I'm en route. I'm studying Buddhism with more vigor than I intended and finding it extremely fulfilling.
I have created beautiful things and honest works of art.
I have tried to extend respect and friendliness. I have often failed. But it remains my goal.
I didn't look at the moon and stars all that much.
I did do things I've never done before. The landscape of my friendships changed drastically. I leave the year with, largely, a different set of supports than those I began with.
This year I became much happier at my job. This year I gave someone a kidney and gave them back their life. This year I took up causes. This year I gave of my riches as much as possible, and in varied ways. This year I learned a lot... a whole lot about myself.
I do care for myself. I love myself, very much. I'm working on showing it more.

This year I didn't make resolutions. Instead I wrote my bucket list. Things I would love to do - someday. I added the things I have already done, just to remind myself of them.

Happy 2012, my friends. You are my dearest family. And you are ferociously loved.
Enjoy!


Bucket List

√ Meet Alanis
√ Meet Amanda Palmer
√ Go to Wrestlemania
Sit front row ringside for a wrestling event
√ Pet a dolphin
Hug a panda
√ Rescue a stranded marine animal
Watch sea turtles hatch
Backpack across Europe
Have a book published
√ Become a published illustrator
√ Have a gallery art installation
√ Get my motorcycle license
√ Work at a job I love
√ Get a tattoo
√ See Pearl Jam
√ Go to an opera at The Met
Go to an opera in Italy
Look at the ocean from the Scottish moors
Have a beer in Ireland
Drink absinthe and smoke in Amsterdam
Live with Bohemian musicians in Montmartre
Worship at a temple in Greece
See Petra
See the Great Pyramids
See space (through a really good telescope)
See Angkor Wat
Take my mother to Hawaii
Take photos of animals in Africa
Hear the Dalai Lama speak
Stay at the Atlantis in the Bahamas
√ See the Red Sox play at Fenway
√ See fall in New England
√ See a play on Broadway
√ Climb the Rocky Mountains
Ski the Alps
Hang glide
Shoot a machine gun (at a target)
√ Give
Give
See New Year’s Eve in Times Square
Go to Mardi Gras
Go to Pride in San Francisco
Visit the Galapagos Islands
Visit Yellowstone
Ghost hunt at Waverly Hills or Eastern State
Visit T.I.G.E.R.S. in Myrtle Beach
√ Drive across the U.S.
√ Fall in love
Fall in love

what a difference...

...a year can make.

I've spent many holidays alone. It's old hat, and really doesn't bother me much. I'm not someone who finds "alone time" difficult. Typically, I enjoy it.
Even so, on most of these solitary occasions I have made a wish that it be the last holiday spent alone. This evening as I glanced up at the digital clock on Courtney and Krystle's stove (I have an uncanny knack for looking at the clock at precisely 11:11) I found myself making this virtually automatic wish.
But this isn't my first holiday alone, and in all likelihood it won't be my last.

This year I've undergone a tremendous amount of change and (hopefully) growth. My perspective on "alone," and on relationships, has changed.

Since I was very young, as young as 10 or 11, I've had a terrible aching. A desperate, empty longing for something. For someone. It felt as though a vital part of me was missing.
I had been born incomplete.
And I was desperately searching for that missing part. Frantically seeking this other half, this person, this partner, this soul mate who would make my life (and me) feel complete.
A tragic romantic from the age of 11 (I was emo before emo was cool), I spent years writing to my future partner. Offering all my promises.

For nearly 20 years, it has been my foremost thought. My utmost goal! My all-consuming quest. I was always looking, and always feeling that empty burning inside. In that place where she was supposed to be.

When I awoke from anesthesia on August 15, something miraculous had happened. Something I never could have expected. Though I awoke missing a very real, vital part of myself... I no longer felt like something was missing.
Though I was now actually incomplete...
I was no longer incomplete.
For the first time I can remember, I felt whole.

And suddenly, I didn't want to date. I didn't want or need to look. I didn't feel the desperation or the endless aching need. Things felt very different.

Though having a partner is still one of the things I envision and very much want for my life, it's no long a matter or life and death. Happiness or misery. I won't die if it doesn't happen, or happen soon. My life won't even suck without it.

What happened? Why the change?
Why did I go from going through girls like water to not wanting to date? What the hell happened to me on that table?

Recently I went to a party with a friend- a girl I was dating prior to my surgery. It was reminiscent of the fun college house parties that made my freshman year the best of my life, but even better: with adults (read: more stimulating conversation and less vomit).
There was a moment when I was standing with Sarah and a couple of new acquaintances, listening to them discuss their world travels. Sarah was talking about her year teaching in Amman, and the other were saying sentences like "Well, when I lived in Jordan..." and "It reminds me of living in Azerbaijan when..." I sipped my Sam Adams Chocolate Bock and looked around, having entirely nothing to contribute.
I don't have any stamps in my passport, or even a passport to be stamped. I don't speak five languages like Sarah does. I don't know much about the political climate of anywhere, even the US. I don't know who the president of Georgia is or what language they speak. I don't even know where it is (by Russia??). But instead of feeling self-conscious and out of place and uncouth as I would have in years past, I felt... secure. I smiled to myself, taking inventory of the things I do regularly and have done recently.
I just gave a stranger an internal organ. I'm a fairly accomplished artist. I'm writing a book that I think will be something special. I spend five days a week getting criminals to cry about their childhoods, talking very intimately to people I would never otherwise cohort with. I get tattoos and play with dogs and go to Buddhist lectures and put a lot of energy into being a good friend.
I'm kinda cool.
At that moment I was able to see how my self-esteem has changed.

Having more self-esteem has changed my needs. Or, at least it has changed the urgency of them. The voraciousness of them. I'm no longer at their mercy.

Last week my therapist asked me if I was dating.
I of course said no, and commented that when I tell people this they look at me with sadness. Pity! As though something must be wrong. If I'm not dating, it must mean I don't think much of myself, or I'm hurt, or I'm disillusioned with love. I laughed, explaining how this couldn't be further from the truth. "I've probably never been as healthy as I am right now." The biggest sign of my health, at least right now, is that I'm not dating. I don't even have the desire.
"I just don't feel the urgency," I said. "I know she's out there. I know she's coming. I'm sure of it. She's doing whatever she needs to do right now, and she'll get here when she's supposed to. It will be someone who deserves me, and I'll deserve her."
"She's on her way. I can't rush her."
My therapist smiled a genuinely happy smile, thankfully avoiding the "Awwwwww" she was stifling.

I know that the things I want are unique and difficult to find. I know it will take a while. When our wildly wandering paths finally cross, we can only hope that we fall into step together and are able make the rest of our journey in tandem. Side by side.

She will be someone who wishes to know me, in the deepest possible sense, badly enough to put forth the effort. She will have a brilliant mind that challenges me and an intelligence that compliments mine in a way that makes us feel like we can conquer the world. She will have a power all her own... a tranquil, harnessed passion for her work and interests and, hopefully, for me. She will be sure of herself and sure of me. She will forgive the worst parts of me and love me as I struggle to change them. She will sit in meditation with me and engage with me in tantric sex. She will make me wonder what I thought was love all those times before.

I will be open to criticism and her gentle urging. I will do all I can to not let us fall into the traps that befell my relationships past. I will care for her emotions and be her safe space. I will be the solid pillar when her world is turned upside down. My arms will always be open and always be comforting. I will support her dreams and do all I can to assist her in realizing her goals. I will accompany, if she wishes, when she leaves to follow her bliss. I will give her space if she wishes for space. I will share my life and all I have with her. For the rest of my life, half of every slice of bread I'm given will be hers. Fifty cents of every dollar I earn. I will care for her as I care for myself, and hopefully improve the care of both. I will care for her like what she is - family.

To tell the truth, my feelings on love and devotion haven't changed. I'm still the hopeless romantic I've always been. While love should never ask you to hurt yourself or suffer, I'm sure I would go to any lengths to keep something that was real. If it were to be with her or protect her, I would still walk through fire.
But here, now, by myself... alone in this bed... I'm still whole. I still have a whole life to lead. I still have a thousand things to see and experience. A thousand places to go, countless things to learn. I'm not going to sit around and wait. I'm not going to worry about it.

Someday my prince(ss) will come.

fear (redux)

I contemplate this blog in an effort to preserve the transparency I hold in such high esteem.
In the last blog I wrote about what my fears are not. Easier than writing about what they are.

While I do not fear death itself, I fear the circumstances. Particularly, I fear dying alone.
Not alone in the literal sense - you never know when you might be hit by a truck or an errant bolt of lightning or choke on a chicken wing. I mean alone in the relational sense. The cosmic sense.
I mean dying alone in the way that my father will die alone. Having abused and alienated everyone he ever had and loved, having no one and nothing. Alone in his bed with no one to hold his hand or see him through to the other side. No one to pay the ferryman.

I can't imagine anything worse.

On the 11th he turned 69. I've often imagined that if he died at home it might be weeks or even months before anyone knew.
Or, perhaps he would go the way of his son and just disappear. The skeleton of a John Doe to be found years later by hikers venturing far from the path. His final resting place an evidence box in the local sheriff's office.

I fear, even though I have proven it wrong, that I will be unloved. In my final days, my hour of need, there will be no outstretched hands. I fear that I will die suffocated by the knowledge that I ruined everything I ever had and everyone I ever touched.

That... is my greatest fear.

I also fear losing my mind.
I fear that I will be an abuser.
I used to fear that I would never find "the one." I don't fear that anymore, but that's for another blog. Possibly the next.
I also used to fear the blindness that this yearning caused. I was fearful of my tendency to force things into spaces where they should not be. Like my temperamental grandfather, who used to become so enraged at jigsaw puzzles that he would take out his pocket knife and carve the pieces until they fit in the spaces he felt they should.
Sometimes I fear losing things that I love. Sometimes I fear losing things that I don't even have yet, or may never have. People in particular. I fear my reaction, knowing my predilection for a deadly sort of depression (even being this far removed from it and healthier than ever. It never feels quite so far away).
I worry that my worst qualities will continue to grow. I worry that my laziness will keep me from enlightenment, or from even embarking on the journey.
I fear that if I ever become a parent I won't be a good one.
I do not fear that I will be a bad partner. I know I am a good partner. I am puzzled by the distinction, as I had the same poor models for both parenting and marriage (though admittedly I have witnessed and participated in more relationships than I have had parents).
Sometimes I fear my anger.

As I am thinking about this, thinking very hard about the things I fear, it occurs to me that I don't actually fear many things.

But you don't need to. The things I do fear can be all-consuming.
The things I do fear are dreadfully commonplace. Being alone. Unlovability. Failure.

I am not afraid of heights or enclosed spaces or snakes or clowns or ghosts or public speaking or bats or rodents or lightning or people a different color than me. I'm not really afraid of much of anything, in that way.

Well, I'm not mad about spiders. But it's not a hysterical fear. I can get close enough to throw a shoe at them or, in recent years, relocate them if they seem friendly enough. I feel the same way about Richard Simmons. Though I imagine I would stay more than a shoe's-throw away if I saw him.
Water makes me a bit nervous. People say I'm afraid of water and I insist that I am not. I drink it and take frequent showers and even enjoy baths and rainstorms. However, I can't swim. It's drowning I am afraid of. Seems like unpleasant business and I wouldn't care to try it.

In writing this... what initially felt like a vulnerable and honest expose... now feels... simple. Mundane.
Normal.
It's what everyone feels.
There is a slight bit of comfort in the normalcy of it. And a good amount of sadness in the normalcy of it. How sad for us! So much fear.

How happy for us. So much opportunity to overcome fear.

I liked the example Robina gave this evening.
When Lance Armstrong set out to become the greatest cyclist on earth, he did not wish to ride downhill. He relished the steepest inclines, as it gave him opportunity to realize his goal. Without the challenges, without those parts that break other cyclists and most people wish to avoid, he would not have realized the goal.
Thus is the way of enlightenment it would seem... more practically, it's the way of happiness.

If only I could always keep this revelation fresh in my mind. Perhaps with practice.

The wise ones urge us to continue digging through our darkness. To face our fears and bad habits and bad karma and weaknesses and call ourselves out with maitri and no excuses. It requires patience, wisdom... control over emotions that I certainly do not have as of yet.
Perhaps with practice.


"The world breaks everyone
and afterward many are strong in the broken places.
But those that will not break it kills."
-Ernest Hemingway

fear and death

Perhaps it's all the thinking about higher consciousness I've been doing lately. Hearing ideas about reincarnation and enduring existence and whatnot. Perhaps its the fantastic season of Dexter I'm watching nightly. Perhaps it's just coincidence. But it seems like death is all around lately, popping into my thoughts even more than usual.
Courtney remarked last week that Christopher Hitchens had died. My joking and probably in poor taste response was, "oh yeah? Wonder where he is these days."
A few days before that a friend told me, very assertively, that everyone's greatest fear is most definitely death. I know that it's hers. As certainly as I know it is not mine.
Perhaps it's odd that I am able to so easily accept any post-death possibility... almost so easily that it's without feeling. Perhaps it's that numbness I've talked so much about.
Perhaps it's a sliver of enlightenment. Perhaps more likely, it's the anti-depressants.

Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Our consciousness lives on and is affected in the next life by our karma in this one.
I don't understand all the ins and outs... but it's possible.

Christians believe in a concept similar to karma. When we die one supreme being weighs our sins against our righteousness and rewards or punishes us accordingly. We go to Heaven, or we go to Hell. If you're Muslim, you got to Janna, or you go to Jahannam.
Sounds harsh... but it could be the case.

Jews, essentially same deal. Our actions impact the way in which we go on... ideally we progress and become closer and closer to G-d. Our ancestors are watching over us from this place.
Sounds nice.

Atheists don't think that anything happens after we die. We die, we rot. We cease to exist, there is nothing else. We return to the earth.
Sounds fine to me. What is there to worry about then?

Agnostics just don't know what the fuck is going on.
Now we're talking. None of us actually know what the fuck is happening now or is going to happen then. Kudos for admitting it.

The only option that sounds quite unfavorable is this whole Hell scenario the Judeo-Christian religions have cooked up. I'd opt out of burning for all eternity if possible.

It's funny how no one who has a "near-death experience" describes going to hell. It's always a tunnel with a bright light... bathed in warmth and comfort, perhaps a lost loved one waiting for them... never fire and brimstone and pitchfork-wielding demons.
If the Christians are right, I can't believe that many people are making the cut. Something's afoot.

Of course, the atheists and those who consider science their only religion would say that this scenario is simply nothing more than biochemical reactions. That these images are simply what's produced by an oxygen-starved brain. And perhaps they are.
In my first book I wrote about the moment when I stopped fearing the atheist post-death scenario. A month after I turned 21 I overdosed on prescription sleeping pills and tequila. I might have died if not for medical attention. But in that moment, through bleary teary eyes on brown shag carpet, I didn't care. I was in so much pain that the only thing I cared about was making it stop. I didn't care if I had to do something terrible to make that happen. I didn't care if I didn't wake up.
But I did wake up.
Five or six hours later I awoke, wrists tied to a bed with medical tape, a tube down my throat.
The time in between was so... still. Completely silent. It was, unfortunately, instantaneously gone. But in some ways it was the relief I was looking for. It was the most complete rest I had ever experienced. No thoughts, no dreams. That time was as simple and as black as the charcoal that was now draining from my every orifice.
It was nothingness. And nothingness felt good.
I knew then that if nothing came after this life except nothingness, I had no fear. It was peaceful. It was simple. Beautiful, in a way.

Personally, I don't believe that is what happens when we die. I think that we do go on to something else. What, I have no idea. I think that death is just a transition to something new. A change of clothes, as some people put it.
I'm intrigued to find out. I believe it will be quite the adventure.

And if it's not... I'm ready for that too. I don't wish to hasten it, by any means, as I'm enjoying myself here at the moment, but it will come when it's meant to (I have to believe).

All this writing about death and I've done very little writing about fear. I've done no writing about what I do actually fear, which was the initial intent of this blog.

But alas. It's 2:15 am. I'll have to put off my fears till another day.

anger

It is important for me to write the things I learn... mull them around in my mind until they present in some well-enough defined way that I might put them down in a permanent (relatively speaking) space. On paper, in ether. Having just returned from the Venerable's second installment of "Becoming Your Own Therapist," I feel hopeful and joyous. Eating an amazing Trader Joe's salad and sitting in my quickly warming, cozy safe space, I feel happy. Content. The books and writing and project around me spark excitement. Perhaps a more accurate phrase would be, they assist me in sparking my own excitement.

Tonight we spent a lot of time talking about "ego grasping." Samshara. Suffering. Pain, anger, grief, jealousy, resentment, low self-esteem. Attachment.
As I am presently wrestling quite vigorously with these very sufferings, I am inclined to write about them each.
As anger perhaps appears to be the most disconcerting to me, I'll start there.
As I sat in meditation this evening, though only briefly, I noticed and found humor in the habits of my mind.
"My, you think a lot about what other people might think of you, don't you?"
"You say "I can't" and "I don't know how" and "its impossible" an awful lot, eh?"

Anger has often seemed impossible. Like a mysterious force that comes and goes as it pleases, strongarming me into being an asshole or being just plain miserable. Forcing me to act like a loose cannon! Forcing me, in turn, to feel shame and guilt at having behaved like, or perhaps just wanting to behave like an animal. What an unreasonable bastard anger is. And so powerful. So effective in taking me hostage.

Right?

Powerful.

I remember quite clearly, as it was likely one of the pivotal moments in my development, thinking about anger at age 12 or 13. I recall thinking that I have the same blinding, rageful, muscular, vengeful anger in me that my father has in him. The same qualities that cause him to be brutal, destructive, miserable, blind... are the same qualities that are in me. I'm unsure why I came to this realization, as I had not faced any particular "wake-up call" with regards to my own anger. But I knew that this was something we shared. That force within him was the same force within me. (Perhaps it's the same force that's within us all. But it did not appear to be the case)
Upon making this assessment I very pointedly decided that my anger must stop. It must go away, it must never be let out- not really let out. I must put it down, put it away, and never feed it.
I must never be like my father. And in order to do this, I must not be angry.

And, I always felt that I did a fairly good job. I pushed my propensity for anger deep inside, suppressed it, eliminated it in many cases. I greatly narrowed the scope of things that triggered my anger, and I constructed a much longer fuse than I believed I naturally had. I did this by no other means than making a very certain choice.

As I grew older, I continued to believe that I was doing a good job of controlling my anger. I believed that the anger I was capable of was so vicious, so devastating, that it would annihilate every living thing near me like an atom bomb- shaking the earth to it's very core.

In some ways it's true. I can count the times that I have been "truly angry," in that blinding, vicious way, on one hand. In these moments I have considered things like murder. These moments are always triggered by very particular things (namely, someone I love dearly being egregiously injured in an evil manner).

But on the other hand... there is too much judgement and irritation and annoyance for me to count. It's daily. Continual. It even happens in my dreams. I am aware that this "lesser anger" is triggered by ridiculously stupid things. Even starting a vehicle is practically enough to make me a complete douchebag. I come out of my skin when people won't stay in one lane or use their turn signal or drive "too slow" (which is typically faster than the speed limit). It burns vast amounts of my energy and is completely absurd. I am aware of this and yet feel powerless to stop it.
My own dogmas trigger blinding anger- I've written about it numerous times before. The "ignorance" of other people (which I'm coming to realize is actually my own ignorance at how to handle my emotions and formulate compassionate thoughts).
Jealousy ignites a deep gasoline well of anger, but we will tackle that shortcoming later.

People have, at several times in my life, perceived me to be "an angry person." And it has shocked me every time.
I've had more than one client tell me that they think I probably have "a vicious temper" and have "a problem with anger," "like them." I've calmly marveled at their assessment, taking a moment to wonder if this was really true. I concluded time and time again that it wasn't... perhaps it was that deep-seated potential for rage they were seeing in me...
I settled on describing it as "it's very easy to irritate me, but actually very difficult to make me angry."

And I think that this is true. But I also think (now) that maybe that doesn't necessarily matter. Maybe anger is anger. Maybe 1000 small angers is just as big as one big anger. Maybe it does the same thing to your insides- only with a chisel instead of a jackhammer.

My ex-girlfriend had a different conception of anger. She often thought I was angry when I would have described myself as merely annoyed, or frustrated, or tired, or even hurt. Because of her experiences, the things I displayed looked very much like very scary anger to her. She described me on more than one occasion as "angry all the time."

And again, the assessment shocked me. I furrowed my brow and tried to dismiss it out of hand... but had no choice but to consider it.

Was I angry all the time?
Had I failed? Had my disavowing of anger failed miserably?

In some ways I guess it did. Perhaps it did destroy my relationship like an atom bomb... even if that explosion was catalyzed by the specific interaction of (us) two elements. It was no less of an explosion. And I was no less than half of it.

My anger is there. It is quite present.
I delight is shit-talking and bitching with co-workers behind the backs of other co-workers. We say miserable things to make ourselves feel better. We make our selves (who we truly, deeply are) miserable and we think it makes us feel better. The more we feed it the hungrier it gets.
I am not without anger, certainly.

But I am also not my father. I am able to practice compassion. I try, even though it is a daily struggle, to nurture my relationships and present myself as someone people might want as a partner/friend/co-worker/mentor/student. I try not to destroy the beings around me. I try to look honestly, introspectively, at myself.
This is not my father. My father's anger is one of the things (maybe the biggest thing?) that prevented this.

I am intrigued and excited my the idea that these "negative emotions," all these sufferings, are optional. That they are not natural and not needed. They are extras. Embellishments that we add out of habit. It is possible to be without them. To actually be *rid* of anger... of jealousy, low self-esteem, grief, depression... suffering.
I like this completely bizarre, foreign concept.
I tell people that the things they believe will be what is true for them. The things they tell themselves create what they feel is "reality."

I believe I don't have to feel anger.

Ever.

taking refuge

I've always joked that maybe if I'm good enough in this life, I'll be reincarnated as a Buddhist.

I fancy myself pretty clever.
I've always written off the possibility of truly converting to Buddhism, stating that it all seemed "too hard." My internal dialogue said I wasn't "good enough" to hold myself to such a standard. "I'm not even a good Jew," I would say, having been raised a brand of Messianic Jewish that was technically classed in cultdom, "and I'm an even worse Christian." I admired Buddhists from afar, awed by their texts and lifestyles.
I knew Buddhism was the "correct" choice when I first heard someone say: keep your religion, if it works for you, keep doing it!
I was aghast! A religion that doesn't denounce all others?? A spirituality that doesn't threaten and shame the lost into conversion? A faith that was not dogmatic, and is not proclaiming that it alone is the one and only true path to salvation?!
It was so refreshing it was startling. And unnerving.
I set it aside. "Maybe some day I'll be good enough to be a Buddhist," I said.

Having, of course, realized that I was never "not good enough" to practice Buddhism... I find no other excuse to avoid this higher standard. It is hard, yes. Very hard. But too hard? Unlikely. Suffering and wandering through life without direction or meaning... that is hard. Too hard for me (to want to continue doing it, anyway).

The term "taking refuge" makes my heart feel warm and heavy. I can't imagine a term better, or so full of imagery.

I have sought refuge from the storms of my life in therapy and alcohol, self-help books and medication, friends and writing, nature and learning, art and love, the arms of loving partners and the arms of anyone available. All were temporary, mortal shelters that made the rain and sleet more bearable but did little to quell the roaring winds that battered my soul like ruthless, armored giants.

I study blueprints and carry stones one-by-one from the quarry. Building has begun. And refuge awaits. A haven in which all are welcome but none are needed.

I think it may be time.

dependent arising

This morning I went to the Kurukulla Center with Stephanie to hear the venerable Robina Courtin, a fat old Australian (her words) nun, speak about emptiness and truth. I came home and felt both reinvigorated by her words and exhausted by the cold I've been combating. Her humor and searing wit kept me riveted while the imbalances in my body (grossly aggravated by forgotten medication) poked at me with icy, sweaty hands and tormented my jittery, hungry stomach.
Despite Ethan's loud band practice in the basement (they weren't bad!), I laid down in my bed with Metta and wrapped the down comforter around me. Laying prostrate - not in tradition but in the literal sense - I dozed off and on but mostly laid in thought for the next five hours.
I tried to practice the difficult concepts she had taught: separating the objective truths from the my "viewpoints" and added "embellishments." So little of what we think is actually objective truth. The stories we tell ourselves are laden with feelings and leaps of thought. Assumptions and perceptions.
Too tired to do so, I thought about all the writing I need to do about the things in my life that cause me struggle and strife. About my current difficulties and emotional pain. All the emotions that I feel ashamed of and try to punish away. It can feel as though they're keeping me hostage.
How helpful it could be to tease apart the grains of objective reality from the billowing clouds of emotion and story-telling. Taking apart the personal responsibility from behind the smokescreen of "it's all your fault"s. And, in my case, how very difficult it is to do all this before I forget how or what it is I should be doing.

I have a lot to be thankful for. My god, a lot. An infinite amount to be thankful for!
I should spend more time meditating on that...

intentions

I open the Word document entitled "my book." It's yet to have a proper name. I peruse it, correct a few typos and reword a few phrases before succumbing to the attention-deficit disorder technology has bestowed upon me.. I watch videos and look at fuzzy-headed pictures of baby Beau. I organize my artwork, dragging thumbnails into various tattoo-related folders. I find a long-lost archive of Suicide Girls photos and enjoy that for a brief moment before realizing it's probably wrong to be looking at naked women while listening to "The Buddha" on tv. Maybe you go to Buddhist hell for doing those things. I quickly close the folder and wander off again via mouse-click. The biopic gives me so much food for thought that I am unable to retain any as I clean out my inbox. I write a couple e-mails. I pull out the necessary materials for the various Christmas-present art projects I am working on... and I begin messing with my phone. I curse the angry little birds for preying on my weaknesses and siphoning away hour after hour. A friend calls, another friend texts. I put on one of the various horror movies I DVR'd during October, and pay attention only enough to note that it's a shameless rip-off of The Shining.
Just now is when the kid is due to start going "Redrum. Redrum!!"... but this time he stays silent.
Now she finds that the "book" he's been writing is nothing but gibberish.
And... now he has an axe.
Wouldn't you know, it's stuck in a door.
I predict a chase scene through the outdoor landscape.
I look through amazing amateur photos from National Geographic. I look up reference photos and save them for art I'm not making. I make the mistake of logging onto youtube and it pours gasoline on my already frenzied inattention, wildly jumping from one topic to the next in 1:45 second clips.

Night after night I do nothing. And I do enjoy it so.
Our world is so chock full of stimuli. There is SO much going on around us and available to us at every moment of our existence. And so much of it I find so very alluring. So deliciously distracting. We have created a world in which it is - in actuality - almost possible to avoid our very own thoughts! It is almost possible to stop feeling.

We haven't accomplished it yet. But we'll keep trying.

It's easy to justify this "time wasted" as meditative in itself. Meditation is shutting off one's thoughts, right? Isn't my mindless crop-harvesting on Farmville the same?
No. Not really. It's certainly not for my betterment.
It's good for a break from life, yes. And it's good to have means for a break. But then... we have to get back to life. Back to thinking and feeling and growing.

When I say "we" I actually just mean "I."

I told someone a couple of months ago that I might need to go away for a few weekends in order to write this book. Go to some isolated cabin in the mountains with no wireless coverage and leave my cell-phone in the car. Lock myself in a cozy warm room and Just. Write.

God it sounds great.
And so hard. I fear I need forcible isolation in order to harness my so easily-enticed spirit. To separate myself from all the delectable distractions that I relish in order to create something that I relish even more. Something I can be proud of.


I set this blog about being distracted aside after becoming too distracted to finish it. I'll come back in the morning, I said.
I did. At 4:45 p.m.
Again I'm surrounded by drawing materials, again I'm flipping back and forth between this and Facebook, Hotmail and Farmville... a friend calls and I talk to her for a while, after which I fill out a volunteer application for the NE Aquarium. And it's now 6:24 and I've still written nothing.

Time is ticking away. And that's fine. It's good! We want it to keep moving, as the alternatives sound much more frightening indeed. But it's still scary to feel time moving so quickly, to feel it slipping through our hands like grains of sand. It's frightening to every week, every month, every year say "where did the time go?" Time will tick away no matter what I do with it. But I am going to continue writing and.... when I get around to it... I will spend some time reflecting on the past year and the year to come. That's what I intended to write this blog about.

There will be more blogs to come.
Blogs about things. Not blogs about nothing or disjointed blogs or blogs that stop in mid-sent

my life... the musical

Music has always been an essential part of my existence. Even when I was young - only country music was allowed in our home, so I would spend hours in my parents bedroom with my mother's collection of 12" vinyl. Waylon and Willie and their highway songs, Merle Haggard and his haggard voice, the classic and sort of goofy Oak Ridge Boys, Dolly Parton and her coat of many colors, Johnny Cash and his prison blues, John Denver and his sweet innocence. Some of it was new and exciting. The ever-rowdy Hank Jr., and a fledgling band called Alabama.

I needed the music. I would have needed it no matter what it was. If I had been relegated to only hearing opera or reggae or cheesy 80's hair bands, the music would have meant just as much. We need music, like we need air and water.

A long while ago I told Courtney that I would make her a CD- my life story in music. I attempted several times, but found it difficult. And quickly realized that it was going to be a sad album. But at most moments in my life, as is the case with everyone I think, there was often a song that just said everything perfectly. Better than I ever could.
Bear with the cover songs if they are not your preferred versions- they are the versions that struck me.

I began with the characters in my life.

First there was my mother...


And my father...


And life in our secluded home. (I'm bummed the original video was pulled from Youtube :(


Martina McBride always resonated with my mother. After 33 1/2 years of marriage, she picked a new song for herself. She chose this one:


Though there was plenty of running and flashing lights, it wasn't as fiery on the outside as it was on the inside. I spiraled into suicidal hate.
I sat on the bus on the way to basketball games, my head against the window and clutching my discman, spinning a copy of Silverchair's Frogstomp. I daydreamed.
(Video is pretty gruesome, don't watch if you find gore triggering)

That place was so dark. For years, the only image I could muster that brought me any joy at all was to picture myself lifeless in a pool of my own blood. When I was 16 one of my friends, the most alive and joyful person I had ever known, was killed. I couldn't understand. Why her and not me? Why did she have to die when she loved life so much, and I had to go on hating mine?
I wanted this song played at my funeral:


My existence was so precarious, every day was such a struggle to simply survive. I teetered along a very fine line... and might not have survived if not for Alanis and her least popular record, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

She knew where I was, and she was fighting too. She gave me hope.
Years later I would have the opportunity to meet her and tell her this. She looked very deeply into my eyes and we understood each other in a grand cosmic sense. Her chords resonated through us both, connecting our hearts and brains and consciousness in C major vibrations.
My lyrical relationship with her never failed me. Wherever her album was, I was. She expressed my thoughts with an uncanny accuracy. When she was angry, I was angry. When she was suffering from crippling depression, so was I. When she began to grow and work through it... I did too. I started to understand.

When she found peace, I found peace.
By the time So-Called Chaos came out, I was in college and had spent years in therapy. I left my home town and never went back again.

I tell people that I remember taking my first breath.
I was 18, outside my freshman dorm. It was a warm spring day and the sun was shining through the leafy oak trees. My heart swelled in a way that I feared it might burst. I had never felt this before! It startled the tears from my eyes when I realized what the sensation was... I was happy. I had never felt it before. I then knew I could survive anything. And I knew how.

"Out is Through," I tattooed across my right foot. I see it every day when I shower, and it reminds me to put my best foot forward. No matter what you've been through or what you're running from, there's only one way to make it better. You can't hide from it or ignore it or tuck it neatly beneath the couch. No matter what you do, it's there. The only way out is through.

On the first day of my junior year of college, I fell in love. Having considered myself heterosexual (unsuccessful though that was) until this point, it rocked my sense of self. My first true love was a woman. And a woman who could never be mine.
My confusion and depression returned in full force. I began drinking heavily and was hospitalized multiple times. My feelings came to light and things went from awful to worse. I lost a friend and a mentor along with my pride and self-esteem.
I tried to make light of the subject by stating that this was our song:


But in reality, Alanis was right again. She formed the sentences that I could not.

"If I had a bill for all the philosophies I shared
If I had a penny for all the possibilities I presented
If I had a dime for every hand thrown up in the air
My wealth would render this no less severe."

I was at more risk than I had ever been. This time I had my own gun.

It was a Ruger.

For years I saw Lisa's face in crowds, driving in cars I passed on the road. Even when I moved to the other side of the country, she was all around me. Grad school was the perfect excuse. I ran.

The song is cliche and overplayed. It would be on every Boston college student's list. But it's perfect. And it's beautiful.


And I did start a new life. I left Colorado and continued to work on myself. I fell in and out of love. Beautiful people touched me and changed my life. The more I loved myself, the more I was finally able feel. I understood what my father had done to me, to us, and I could finally put my anger where it should have been all along.


Apocalyptica (who I like to call "the male Rasputina") released a song in 2009 with the help of Three Days Grace vocalist Adam Gontier that made me realized how I now felt about my father. The shame and sadness was but a small footnote to how it really felt: vindicating.

Corey Taylor sang with them for "I'm not Jesus," and it was brutally honest as well. But there was one difference in the lyrics... I will forgive.
I have forgiven him.

It's been years since I've felt suicidal. It's just not an option anymore.
I am happy.
All I want now is so simple...


And I am.

OK, that is.

:)

the hungry ghosts

The long dead and buried have been surrounding my bed as my head hits the pillow each night. Memories of moments I had forgotten, the sounds of places I left long ago.
The smoke swirls around me... illuminating the dark, entering through my nose in white wisps and escaping through my mouth.

I smell the wood stove burning. My mother's footsteps are quick, light, with purpose. Somehow, they contain comfort. Happiness.
My father's footsteps are slow. Deliberate. Like the steady gait of a lumbering movie monster that you cannot escape no matter how you run. I peer over my blue-and-white-checked bedspread at the black outside the door and hope that he is not coming for me.
If places really do retain residual energy the pine logs and aspen paneling of this house, my father's handmade creation, are steeped in fear and loathing. I hear their voices. I hear his voice.
At the pinnacle of our pentagon-shaped living room, above the archaic television, hangs the robust head of a 7-point bull elk in full bugle. To his right, a pronghorn antelope above a chair and an old green rotary phone. My father's worn, rusty-orange recliner completes the wall... adjunct to one entrance to the kitchen and never far from the cheap beer in the refrigerator. Coors Light, then Keystone Light, and in the last years Black Label.
I don't remember a time when I didn't feel the fear. It's a deep, innate fear that feels as though it has been in this soul longer than this soul has been in this body. I know, as a child, that someday he will kill me.
Distance is all that buffers this feeling now.

The mist billows into clouds above my bed, storms of lightning sparking, too bright to be shut out by closed eyelids. It shows me, projecting on the scrim beyond my eyes.

my first angry taste of whiskey... I couldn't understand why it was all he did. Alone in this place, I grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam at 12 and drank a swallow I sputtered, my eyes watered and my throat burned. I knew then why he added water. To this day it tastes like regret.

praying that he wouldn't beat me in front of my friends on my birthday... his favorite mule attacked and trampled me, though he only saw the rock I threw at her. My hysteria and the hoofprints on my back perhaps saved me, though the screaming and bruising from his hands was embarrassing still.

he had a knack for hitting a pop fly straight to me... a skill I inherited, or perhaps learned, from him. He was able to restrain his insults when we played catch. He was a dad.

I could never recall the reason, but the "discipline" was frequent. The belt was his favorite implement; the extra terror it created with the dramatic snap-snap-snap through the belt loops... the irony of him beating me with large buckles I gave him for father's day was lost on me until years later.

when I was in third grade a visiting girl I couldn't stand let my crush on Josh Kealing slip. My father told me if I were dating a boy he would kill us both with his shotgun.

approaching our new home, face growing redder in both fear and shame as I slowly recognized my childhood belongings thrown into the snow on the lawn. He had perhaps felt bad about telling me "whin I DIE you will git your teddy bear"... but not that bad. I turned and looked around at the deserted street. I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck, watching me from somewhere as I herded my ruined childhood into my mother's house.

waiting. Waiting in those stained purple chairs in Pueblo Hospital to see if my mother was going to live or leave me.

sitting next to my niece at the foot of the guest-bedroom bed, Super Nintendo controllers clutched desperately in our hands. Our attention focused so completely on Mario, Yoshi, and their alien worlds, ignoring the anger and insanity. Not listening, not watching, forgetting when my brother threw her mother down the stairs of their trailer and broke her arm. I could not ignore my hatred for him.

the peace that existed on the back of a horse. Watching the Continental Divide jut through the cerulean blue sky... gazing into the mountain-top crater lakes, seeing every fish in the clear green water... looking down at the patchwork quilt of potato fields across the valley... stopping in silent prayer to the orange embers and heaven-bound sparks of the crackling camp fire... the horses were our hooved sentinels, snorting in the night...

In my small life I learned. I engaged my curiosities and absorbed the world around me. I dove into Zoobooks and Audobon illustrated guides to birds and rocks, reptiles and amphibians. I practiced with my bow and arrow, though not as much as my father would have liked. I tucked-and-rolled when thrown from the horses, but could not dodge and weave from his crushing hands. My door locked with much persistence and force, but more with luck. I became terribly ill and stayed that way for years, drowning in acid from my burning, nauseous stomach.

GoogleEarth tells me that the log house at 5315 County Road 14 still stands, as does the barn and tack-room. The six ponds across the street have nearly withered to dust. The boards of my tree-house are rotted and grown over. Surely he wooden slats of the bridge across Pinos Creek have long-since been replaced.
The dark, overgrown tunnel of foliage enveloping the river was ominous to 7-year olds. I told my friends a tale of a witch who lived beneath the boards that was purely farce but frightening enough to make me speed away with a look over my shoulder each time I rode past it on my bicycle.

But there were specters who followed me home. Spirits that clung to me as I escaped to far northeastern reaches. The boards and cement of this old cabin do not retain this haunting.

This haunting is mine.

ignorant bliss

I've spent a lot of time in the past six months talking and thinking about the expectations I have of others.
Those who know me well enough to know my fears (which I'm not sure is anyone these days, perhaps excluding my therapist), know that one of my biggest fears is having a radically inaccurate view of myself. Being deluded, being unable to be objective.
Many of us, maybe all of us, have expectations of others that we are not always able to live up to ourselves. When this happens we engage in impressive mental gymnastics, rationalizing and flat-out making excuses until our own behavior is acceptable and no longer causing us any cognitive dissonance. It works, as long as we don't think about things too hard. It makes us hypocrites.
Whenever I find myself pained by people and so very disappointed in them, I have to question my place. Who am I to judge? How can I feel disappointed in others when I am so very far from perfect?
Last week my therapist commented on something I've known for a long time.
"No matter how many times it happens, you always seem surprised when people let you down." I agreed that my ability to be both cynical and naive at the same time is... interesting.
No matter what I witness or experience, I expect the best from others. I want to believe my clients when they explain away and rationalize their despicable deeds. I want to believe that they can do better, and never hurt anyone again. I want to believe that they are good. And I do. I believe it and believe it and believe it again, no matter how many times I'm proven wrong.
I can't help but wonder if, when my optimism will run out.

I find myself devastated by people in my life when they don't live up to my expectations. Disappointed equals unreasonably devastated. I should be able to accept their shortcomings as human nature, as I am intimately familiar with my own terribly human nature. I've done things I am deeply ashamed of, things that I might not be so understanding of in others.

But there is a lot of space between cynicism and naivete.
While it would not be practical or fulfilling to always expect the worst, it's also impractical to always expect the best. It is, unfortunately, unreasonable to expect everyone to treat others with respect. To consider the feelings of people that they do not know. To hold loyalty and honesty in the highest regard. To hold emotions as most valuable and seek vulnerability and transparency. I cannot expect these sorts of things.
Can I expect them from myself? I try very hard to hold myself to these standards. Sometimes I fail. But I hope... god, I hope that more often than not I succeed. Whether it's reasonable or not, I must continue to have expectations for myself that are the highest I can imagine. It's the only way we get better.

Is having the highest expectations of others the way to have better relationships?

self harm

It's no secret that I'm weird.
It's a shame (I guess) that we're never able to truly understand how different or similar we are from other people, since we can never experience the inner workings of another person. We only know how we feel.
From an early age I've had a problem. A problem that I used to loathe and railed against with all my might in my teenage years. I fought to deaden myself, to feel nothing, to shut it all off... because the truth was, and is, I feel a lot. I mean, A LOT. Probably too much. And almost definitely an unnatural amount.
I know I've written of it before, but I'll always remember the first moment I realized that I my feelings were not only my own.
I feel other people's anger, and (especially) anxiety. Sometimes headaches. Other body aches.
In talking with a friend this evening and my therapist Monday night, I explained that I have a problem with emotional individuation. Perhaps it's because of these things mentioned above. I have difficulty seeing the difference between my own feelings, as far as worth/relevance/intensity, and the feelings (or circumstances) of others. My therapist pointed out that it's part of the reason, actually a large part, of why I donated a kidney. I didn't see the difference between the suffering of a stranger and my own. "No, it wasn't happening to you," she said, "But it could. And that effects you just as much."
There are things that I have never experienced myself, but I have an extraordinarily strong, negative, emotional response to them. The two biggest things are rape/sexual abuse and infidelity. Two things I have thankfully never experienced first hand. But seeing these experiences through those around me effects me more intensely than I think a first-hand experience actually would.
Sometimes the experiences of others, particularly of people I love, affect me far more than my own. It's likely because I've spent most of my life having a far easier time having compassion for others than for myself.
Most of us are better at giving advice to others than following the same good advice ourselves. I have spent many years feeling love for others that I did not have for myself. Today this is no longer the case, but there are still some Swiss-cheese holes in my emotional landscape. Poverty of things I just cannot experience for myself.
My over-identification with the problems/feelings/hurts/bad decisions/risks of others is a problem. It is one of the worst (and best) things about me. I find it difficult to explain in a way that is easily understandable to everyone, because it's not at all like what I think is "normal." Feelings sometimes rip through me. Feelings that are not even my own, situations that are not even my own, harm me. Hold me hostage. And because there appears to be little chance of my turning this off (though it has lessened, and drastically in the past three months- save for those two areas), my only means of protection is distance.
I cannot stop energies and emotions and fears and loves and angers and devastations from moving through as they please. From coming into me, wrapping fiery hands around my entrails, grinding my teeth and slamming me against walls. It sounds, I know, like something I could control, right? With education or self-care or awareness or perspective or perhaps maturity? Some of it is I'm sure. But some of it is, sadly, me. It's hardwired in the truest sense. It has likely been a defense mechanism, it has been my saving grace, it is the pool inside me from which any goodness springs.
But it is painful. And it is volatile. That warm spring might be dried, turned icy or boiling, or spew volcanic ash at a feather's touch. I have done much study about the parts of me that are learned, changeable, and the parts of me that just "are." The things I must accept and work with instead of against.
I can only control what I expose myself to.

words on paper

In it's infancy, my book is a very rough 62 pages of feelings and conversations. I have just begun to transcribe the handwritten words from a composition notebook I've been carrying with me constantly for the past four months.
It is, without a doubt, the most difficult artistic task I've ever undertaken.

Introductions are difficult.
I'm often too verbose.
I use too much foreshadowing.
Sometimes I move too quickly, skipping large chunks of my story and forcing myself to backtrack or cut and paste myself into maddening circles.

I am having difficulty weaving my story in such a way that the reader journeys with me: feeling the same excitement and growing disappointment, the same abandonment and then reckless abandon... the hurt and the resilience. I want them to understand the changes I have undergone.
I'm not even sure I understand the changes.

I am grasping to hang on to them... gripping with both hands.