Month: March 2020

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Love In the Time of Corona

Did the love become the virus, or was the virus a manifestation of the love? Can anything truly be that powerful?

Is love helped or hindered by extreme passion?

One of the first loves I ever left was because I watched the movie Serendipity, and I realized then and there I didn’t feel like that and I wanted to. This book was a feature part of that movie. So I downloaded it on audiobook and listened while stocking produce on the shelves at Trader Joe’s all those years ago.

And here I am taking a deeper look at the meaning of this book. Everything truly does come full circle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about adapting lately. Historically when we think of this I would say we also think of evolution. They can go hand in hand. However, adapting can actually go in either direction.

You can adapt to things you would never want to.

I am adaptable nearly to the point of shape shifting. This is a sharp realization as of late. Something I used to be praised for, something I’m being praised for now. It’s labeled patience. But the changes that are happening to me. I’m not so sure.

As always some are good, and some are not so good.

The people of the world are so incredibly anxious right now. We are in the middle of being history. Not making it, but being it. Forced to adapt in ways we never asked for, and feeling rather helpless and scared.

The changes in my life that preceded this I thought I chose. Do we choose our destiny without even realizing it? Or is there truly certain components that go beyond logic and awareness?

I’m reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle Wambach. She says, “What I thought would kill me didn’t. Every time I said to myself I can’t take this anymore- I was wrong.” That she can use pain to become. “I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. And pain is the fuel of revolution.”

“Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy (uncanny given the entire premise of this blog), and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming.”

Glennon’s words, her warm and funny videos, her audiobook and the paperback, are a life raft for me right now. I found her because my spirit animal Elizabeth Gilbert shouted the praises of Love Warrior. I pre-ordered it purely on recommendation and I was not disappointed.

Some day I hope to join the ranks of these women. Actually I’m already in their ranks, my words just haven’t hit the shelves yet. Thus far mine have the most impact in 1-1 connection. I never met a dream I didn’t tackle. I can know it’s in process/progress now because I wake up with words swimming and begging. They beckon me from my slumber and demand of me.

As you can see my ability to try and intellectualize my feelings rather than boldly state them in the first person, is Olympic in its quality.

My entire life has been lived adapting. Surviving. I thought my word was survivor but truly it’s adapter. Because what I used to survive was to get the hell away from what was happening at home and try and find what felt/ looked healthier than what was happening. I did this by being like-able.

Even more importantly I did this by being useful. I received love in childhood only when I could be useful, never for free. No one ever just delighted in me because I was born. In fact my being born was a sin done by a sinner, and something even my grandparents couldn’t face.

I’m not sure where they went “wrong” or if that can even be put on them. That an older man (a married one I think), got their beautiful young daughter pregnant.

My mom would proudly tout a shirt that said, “good girls go to Heaven, bad girls fo everywhere.” My grandmother hated it. Mom you would be proud the jury is still out on heaven, but I have for sure been everywhere.

Funny about that I spent my entire life wondering what was the good thing, how not to be bad. I have a conscience like you’ve never seen before. Perhaps this is to do with being highly sensitive and having more mirror neurons than the average human. See article on this here: The highly sensitive brain

My good began in earnest but it required the repression of everything I was. I had to be rigid and I sensed way back then I couldn’t grow like that. So I did what Glennon says above except not having any of my resources met, add adaptability and you get a recipe for living to survive, quickly like you’re outrunning a monster (your thoughts about yourself).

Add ADHD and a component of impulsivity and you my friend have the recipe for one hell of a story. And I have 10,000 stories of all the love I have embarked on within one very sad story about a very lonely girl, who never was naturally given the ability to discover her gifts.

I have a lot of stories.

Well if Glennon’s right perhaps I haven’t had it wrong this whole time by feeling things the way that I do. I don’t feel like the humans do. I feel every second of my life in full array. If you knew what it felt like to have all your nerve endings exposed all the time.

Would life be any gentler with me? Would I want it to?

Like Glennon I will feel and I will become. I just wish I had ever been able to undertake these things without needing to keep people along the way for my safety. That I didn’t grow oddly as a product of scarce resources like those trees that grow all bent and sideways because they are reaching for the sunlight.

Nothing is safe right now, not my health, not my heart.

So for now I’m going to have to burn, and find out who I will be on the other side.

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Capital T trauma

I am going to be talking more about my trauma in the coming weeks. How very much it has impacted every corner of my life. My decision making. The way that I live and love. The choices and the way that I make them.

People my whole life have told me how strong I am. They admire what I do and how I do it. But the thing so often missed in all of that is who I am at my core and what I carry around each day.

How can someone be nearing 40 and only doing this work now? How can they not? Most people never do it. It’s almost impossible. I’m still determined to crack the code.

Right now I am researching the freeze aspect of trauma. How when I am overwhelmed I literally can’t move. I have to have a smelling salts wake up, and then I can mechanically make that call or open that piece of mail, but when I’m consumed it’s almost impossible.

I freeze all the time. I freeze when emotions are too overwhelming. And then I berate myself when I don’t reach out warmly and hug my children.

And adult is not supposed to be so scared. But when you carry a hurting child with you….. you can be either at any given time depending on the circumstances.

I present well.

On the inside I’m a tangle of coping mechanisms.

Please love me anyway. When I can’t love myself.

My way of handling my trauma was to give to everyone I’ve ever loved all the love I never was. I thought I had done journey after journey with self love. But truly I’ve done journey after journey of loving someone else so I can even feel the reflection.

Because that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to love.

And I want to love my kids will all I didn’t have, and I have in so many ways, but connection. I still struggle with that. Because I get overwhelmed so easily.

Because I’m still a scared little girl.

I’m still a scared little girl…..

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Unexpected Journeys

The only thing you get when you fall in love with someone else when you’re married is two broken hearts.

And as a matter of fact exponentially more than two in this case.

People you used to love that you can no longer look in the eye anymore, and then you can no longer look at yourself. And you still love them, and you know if they looked at you they will want to throw up.

A total lack of trust in everything. The worst thing for someone with C-PTSD.

A desolate boneyard where dreams used to be. And you no longer have access to yourself anymore either…. that is the most crippling part. Literally, figuratively all of it.

This is what happens in the realm of fear and shame anyway. There are other options, but since most people run their lives on a healthy dose of fear and shame all the time it’s easier to join than to feel alone one more second. I’ll join anyone in any state they are in as long as I never have to be alone again. And yes yes I know I never am. I truly never am I have an amazing support system. But it’s a different kind of love I speak of.

And as someone I care for very much says you can’t un-know. But sometimes you still have to move forward with all your knowing because you just do. Because life moves forward with or without you. The seasons will change no matter what you do.

So in true Christina fashion I tried to science the shit out of it. Like Matt Damon stranded on Mars, and this is appropriate because I feel about like I’d imagine he did. Faced with imminent death, with shrapnel he had to pull out of his side and staple himself up, and then figure out how to survive. Yep, we are there. Here we are.

As it turns out, according to my extensive research, this sort of thing either happens because of destiny or unmet needs not acknowledged in the relationship until it turns blue with the need for oxygen. Then a smelling salts wake up. Sharp.

I feel exactly like him (Matt on Mars). Every small victory seemed to yield a larger set-back and he was constantly faced with giving up hope. Spoiler alert. He didn’t. And I don’t either because I’m not wired that way. But since I’m not stranded on Mars hope is not substantial food for the work I’ve done to create my life.

I’m a big girl with choices, hard ones, but I won’t subsist on crumbs. I never deserved that beginning and for sure I won’t return to there now.

If we do return to our beginnings there is always a lesson.

I wish I knew now what I will in a year or so. But why do I wish to not be in the lesson, if I always appreciate the fruit it bears. But you have to ride out the storm and the winter if you want more moments of calm and sunshine.

How did we get here you might ask. Oh a variety of things. Things so complicated it feels almost impossible to get anyone else to understand, and with all the responsibilities on top there isn’t even room to try.

So you lose all normalcy. The compass is broken.

There is no True North, only a spinning dial that matches your brain. Round and round in circles trying to grasp onto a story that creates the least possible shame and suffering all while trying to feel the feelings, and everyone else’s, and maintain.

I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. And the doers, the ones who fell in love, they are the bad guy. The shameful, naughty, dirty thing. The immoral. The ones without values. The creep.

But in real life there is so much more to understand than what meets the eye.

My original post was about letters. I have a lot of letters, and not a single one of them makes me know any more how to be in the face of this. Because my heart is invested here. I am not an objective bystander. I try to use my objectivity to endure, and every other tool in my belt.

They have fallen short so I will sit in the decay of my broken dreams, and not be able to distract by already creating new ones.

I will be still.

My letters are AS, BS (yes that is about right), MS, NCC, LPC, ADHD, C-PTSD, PTSD, HSP, and there are probably more I’m forgetting. None of these letters have in any way shape or form prepared me for this. We can have all the education, street or in the classroom and life can still surprise us.

Life has me on my knees. It’s made me it’s you know right now. And as I believe I’ve said recently I guess I’ll need to learn to pray.

But to who? Goddess ? The Universe ? The great philosophers ? To myself? To Buddha, the Genie…..

Praying is so passive. It implies faith in another versus faith in self. I believe you do need both. Because if you’re going to ask for help, you need to know what you’re asking for and why. And where you want to go?

You need to know what you want and where you want to go. Otherwise any work is empty.

You will always need to know these things on a journey. If you don’t know them you aren’t on the journey.

What journey do I want to be on??

I know I want to be on a journey and not a ride that’s for sure.