Tag: #sharingjourneys

Posted on

I didn’t belong to myself….I could never belong with you.

And all she wanted was for someone to deeply understand why she loves comfort sad movies on repeat and music. Not merely to comment, certainly not to criticize, but to truly grasp and understand how that is soothing to her heart. Before you can learn to self soothe you must be soothed from the outside. I stayed trapped there. D

Desperate with that need. I tried to distract from that pain, with everything. People, food, drink, everything, everything and nothing was sustainable until I could sustain this pain in ways that are healthy. I’m not there yet, but I’m on that path. That gives me hope.

When I met my formerly referred to wife I was watching the movie Me Before You and Under the Tuscan Sun quite often. I still like Me Before You so much. It holds me through the storm. I would get so excited about love, but the truth is I didn’t know very much at all about healthy love, and knowledge from the outside wasn’t enough.

It’s the pain that has broken me into being a better human being. And staying the course of not fixing it with anything outside of me. Is that even within a human capacity? So I’d say I’m being hard on myself and try again and again meeting love from the outside, not having it inside. It feels impossible. I’m possible.

Then there are these people that show up and love me so unconditionally for free, not because I do anything. And that is teaching me about real love. The power of sight. It feels like I lost the best part of me is the song lyric on now. I never even got to see the best part of me through anything other than other peoples eyes. The pain is crippling.

Pathologically lonely.

The glue that held me together has been the moments I felt a sense of belonging. I’ve done this in a variety of ways, primarily loving others, and not myself. In that way I didn’t know anything about true love, and how would I. Trying to figure out how to be true love by feeling truly loving, but it could never sustain….I could not sustain it without equal reciprocity and investment, from self and other. Neither was in alignment.

I am hopeful for my future and for my present.

As an adult I stayed trapped as a child. The good aspects of this was childlike enthusiasm and dreaming, the bad is that I’m prone to childlike behaviors. Yin and Yang, light and dark. I am now beginning to hold space for both.

Recovery feels mostly dark, but there’s so much light to be found in the process.

My therapist said to me the other day about a talk she had heard. The gist is that if you were born blind and learned to rely on many devices to do things that might be normal for someone else, and suddenly were restored to sight, would you not use your new sight from then on. Versus relying on what you were used to. I received the message.

I could only love others and want to be loved by them, what I couldn’t do was love myself. And now I’m beginning to…. It’s the beginning, not the end. For that this Thanksgiving day I’m forever grateful.

It’s a tragedy when your motivation for learning what love, is primarily kicked into high gear from not being loved. when your unspoken vows and contract include meeting the needs that were not met so long ago.

Being the one who speaks the unspoken is an unspeakable burden. Thrust into loneliness again. Over and over, stuck in the spin cycle. Dizzy and anxious in an unforgiving prison.

Feeling like the mind is a prison feels an insurmountable chore. You never know when it’s complete and even if you’re moving in the right direction because your mind is constantly berating you with old messages. It’s telling you you’re blind, when you can see perfectly fine. The ultimate gaslight.

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” As excerpted from a recent gift, The Emotionally Abusive Relationship by Beverly Engel. No one ever tells you the ultimate of this is your relationship with yourself. People aren’t even taught to think about this, the most important of all relationships, and by the time this information reaches you most likely your nervous system will be shot to shreds.

Your concentration and spirit so broken it seems irretrievable. I am here to tell you this is another painful lie. Anything that’s lost can be found. But something that’s never been wired in, can that be created. Research suggests mostly no.

Years ago another gift told me I defy gravity and it was true enough and a trusted enough source that I learned to believe it’s possible.

Healing is always possible. It’s hard, but not impossible. This is my personal mission in this lifetime. Heal other, heal thyself.

Not for the faint of heart and I am grateful that of all things I am not that. My skin is worn thin, but I won’t let that stop me. Don’t let your limits hold you back. Push through them because what’s on the other side is quite beautiful. At this point it’s mostly an occasional glimpse, one that I’m never sure is an exhaustion induced apparition.

That’s where faith comes in. This is the one area I’m learning it’s necessary to believe exists from without, and that everything within still always holds a Devine compass that will guide you if you choose not to stay blind.

I’ll stay the course, but I won’t do it blind.

Trust me I need all the help I can get. Most days I can barely breathe. But there is always hope.

Today I am grateful for hope…. And for the privilege of the pain so many share with me that I am able to learn from and the lessons applied are truly transformative.

I am grateful for transformation even when it is one tiny thread at a time. This is going to be one hell of a tapestry. Stay tuned. Stay grounded and grateful, stay loving and courageous.

Stay

Posted on

Fools Rush In

I can barely hold my arms up to write this post. On my phone of course, because it’s what I’m used to and I tend to use paths I’m used to for such things. I restarted with a new trainer. My new trainer is lovely, but adjusting to change is hard. Understatement. She and my new self are very supportive so that is what makes the difference.

I’m at my waterfront home. I no longer rely on this excursion for the oxygen in my lungs. I branch out now, but when I visit it’s like coming home. I’ve been making a home inside myself. The walls are no longer bare and the decor is taking shape. I’m becoming visible to myself, from more than being seen by someone else. I could cry. I do cry often.

A song by Trevor Hall came on this morning. Via the Josh Radin radio on Spotify. You can’t rush your healing it’s called and holy moly. Why didn’t anyone tell me that? Christina people have tried to tell you that for years. Not in those exact words. But I couldn’t be told much, that automatically was a slight. My people loved me anyway, and they stay. It was usually me who didn’t stay. I didn’t know how. Now I am staying the course and that discipline will eventually give way to the loyalty that is my core.

Love hard, but don’t take any shit is my motto as of late, and say what you mean and mean what you say. Getting clear on wants and needs and not being all over the place with my communication and choices. That is my recovery and my god it’s one thread at a time. It cannot be rushed. I keep getting slapped in the face by my limitations and my behavior as created by my life.

The truth is I’ve spent my life avoiding myself by trying to fix others: it could be said that I almost didn’t have a choice in the matter until I did. Awareness is everything. It used to be vicious and now moving towards more gentle.

The truth is I always needed to fix myself and to do this I needed support. I tried to force support, manipulate myself and others to get it, tried to emulate….. but I kept ending up back at the beginning with me. So the only option left is to humbly begin building a space inside myself, I can be satisfied with.

At this point in my life this requires a lot of forgiveness and humility.

The ability to recognize everything I projected out is pain that comes from within and my task should I be willing to accept it is to work only on me. Finally alone without becoming panicky and dysregulated. Finally able to meet myself. I need to meet myself where I’m at and stop shouting at anyone else to do anything to help me feel better.

The truth is you don’t get into an abusive relationship typically unless you have also been abusive. They go hand in hand. I’ve been so unkind at certain points in my relationship history. I can trace and know why, but that doesn’t change the impact it had on that person. I know there are people who will always feel the sting of me, more than the love.

All or nothing. Completely selflessly focused on other, crashing and burning into a fiery inferno because this is not sustainable. Being an island is not sustainable. Round and round and round on the ride becoming sick. Now I’m just walking and breathing. Crawling before I walk, walking before I run…..

The long game. It’s a marathon when what I’m used to is living life in sprints. So painful to come to terms with me. Face to face with her until I don’t look away in shame.

I can only forgive myself and do better. I can use what I have learned to be more kind, more gentle, and more loving to everyone and every thing. That is what the pain in my life is doing. It’s changing me. Some things are so difficult to change, but the pains opens my heart to how others feel in my presence. And I look up to 11:11. Moving in the right direction.

I’m going to move there slowly with my wants and needs on board and take responsibility for how I feel and create a stable space to operate from. Come what may I am going to do this.

This morning I am grateful to watch Dexter w my son, to see clients, to drive my daughter to a job she loves that is healthy, and to have peace in my heart. There’s also so much pain, but I won’t let it cloud my ability to have joy for how far I’ve come and how hard I work at being a better person.

I am committed. That is a relief and feels stable and good. You can’t unknow and you can never go back, and in this case that is a relief. It’s been so overwhelming to become so aware of so many damaging things seemingly all at once. It’s less overwhelming if I slow down and just breathe and handle my priorities one at a time and with the appropriate order.

Slow down Christina …. Slow down and just breathe. You don’t have to do anything. I think of how Billy Joel’s song Vienna resonated so deeply almost 10 years ago now when I began this journey into the world of counseling.

Just slow down, be intentional, kind, responsible, dependable and don’t forget you’re lovable and deserve the things you want and need. You always did, and it’s ok now. You’re ok.

Posted on

Thread by Thread Cross my Heart…

This is interesting because it’s everything I’ve been trying not to be…. And this reminds me there is magic in it too.

It’s been a morning. Many things have gone unplanned and it has left me some time to lament about how emotional this healing process is.

Today someone I love dearly is putting down his very old dog. She can hardly be called that so we call her doglette. Looked like a man walking a rat on a piece of dental floss lol. I feel for him and the loss for his people. It makes my heart hurt. And that’s a space my heart is used to lately.

I’m sitting here in between an old self and a new and that is when things are seen with the most clarity. My gratitude abides my spirit that is so weary lately. Mostly I spend my time resting. Actual resting not pummeled into an exhaustive pile and then gigantic forced spurts of productivity spurned by the sting that scarcity leaves.

My tattoo itching and healing reminds me of my heart. Is it itchy yet? Are we there yet. I was always so impatient and now I dislike the state of being that way, so that I may know this more mature season of my self.

My neighbor is in pain today and I’m helping with her puppy. I didn’t need to be asked. She isn’t the type to want to, it hurts I can tell (to ask), and I know that all too well. I think of how lonely and hurting I was, last season at this time in my life with a puppy myself and no relief, and what a different human I was then.

I was a human doing and there was no being about it. I was being hard on myself, being filled with agony, being alone and scared. The doing distracts from the being, but that like all the rest is only temporary.

This morning I gave the privilege of taking my daughter to the doctor, helping my neighbor, and seeing clients later. To me living is a privilege and I never was able to see it that way before. So much of my life being in my head has felt a terror filled burden, and I’ve scrambled for a sense of security. It was with me all the time, but we don’t know until the embodiment of lived experience. What a trickster the universe is….

It’s never too late is my mantra as of late. That painful thought has seduced me into so much misery over the years. I always felt behind, not enough, and many other untrue woundings.

My biggest battle right now is with all or nothing. I listened to a Lisa Romano video last night on PTSD on abuse recovery and she said “when you’re having your psychological self chopped up into tiny little pieces by someone who has managed to get into your heart space, this is debilitating.” And I literally burst into tears. Feeling seen. Feeling understood. In the video which I’ll link here she talks about how learning can literally rewire you and how the more powerless we feel at the time of a trauma the more dramatically it affects us. That made so much sense to me. It unlocked a level of forgiveness I have not been able to reach and it opened the flood gates of pain lying on the other side. https://youtu.be/eujm1NARGg8

I’ve been in so much pain. Enough to change my heart and my relationship with myself and others. I’m changing daily. I surrender so much more quickly. Becoming gentle with myself and others. This experience revealed my dark relationship with myself and all of my trauma filled tendencies of operating in the world.

It’s so much to hold space for. 🙁 My nerves are frayed and the acute awareness of my irritability is too much to bare sometimes. This isn’t my natural state, there’s a whole other person inside of here. One that enjoys playing and is creative and has a beautiful imagination.

I just want to be in a safe home with her.

A song is on that keeps repeating I want to love you but I don’t know how…Neptune by Sleeping at Last. Beautiful lyrics. My heart swells, shrinks, expands…. “Thread by thread I come apart, if brokenness is a work of art, surely this must be a masterpiece. I want to tell you but I don’t know how.” This song is unreal.

In the video Lisa talks about how trauma affects our hippocampus and we have a hard time differentiating between the past and now and with context. Trusting our own reality.

Right now I am in a state of acceptance finally. That is truly surrender. Recovery is one step at a time and I need to hold my choices and their outcomes in one hand, and my pain and mistreatment in the other, and to balance it all. Meanwhile keep it simple. Caring for others is a salve. Even if I do have to ask all the time if I’m being co dependent, but it’s not so bad. At least I am aware.

I’m moving from vicious awareness to a gentle protective awareness I will always be able to access, but also not let drive the car of my life. He can be with fear, his twin, in the toddler seats strapped into the back. Love is going to drive now. Fear and awareness can have a sippy cup, a snack, and a nap and then wake up and behave themselves already.

I am making my life a smoother ride for me, and as I do everything else comes into alignment. It’s two steps forward, one back. Breaking and building…..

This is my life right now…..

Posted on

A Letter from my 2007 Self Tearing me Open.

It’s time to break the silence. My silence. My stopped up pain. The red ears and head that feels like it will explode from swallowing it all down. Sometimes recovery feels like it will kill me.

I’m seeing a lot of clients right now and I grow as a result, exponentially every single day.

I often can’t capture my many selves or feelings or experiences and that frustrates me. It’s a sneeze that doesn’t come, and it itch I cannot reach. It plagues me really.

The song A Million Dreams is on, from The Greatest Showman. That movie is powerful for me in so many ways. I was that little boy in so many ways, and the older one. Desperate to be seen as good, worth something, enough. All sorts of ideas, but all of that getting away from me, as well as everything I already had.

Whatever that even is because right now I’m just plagued with uncertainty and it’s nearly intolerable. Becoming able to tolerate and to stay with my own experience and develop a self is the necessary component.

Can’t meet my needs outside, uncomfortable in. Anxiety, loss, doubt, scarcity creating a Black Plague that eats possibilities and joy. It’s so painful. Like burning in an eternal hell. Hell is definitely a creation of the mind, a mind trap versus some place you can end up.

The world is on fire…. People are scared and hurting, and no amount of wanting to be a warrior to help can distract me from that being my ultimate deflection of saving myself. I want like heroine to save everyone and everything else, and then need to resist that.

I keep coming across people who tell me so emphatically how good it feels to be around me, they feel they become better around me: what an honor and what a burden. I need a space where I can feel better too, and the consistent message is that needs to be with me.

It’s so hard to say no and not be afraid I’m isolating or depressed or letting someone down or this or that thing. It’s so much work to know myself and it’s so fucking painful in here. Let me out! Can’t I just do what I’m so good at and have that be it? “They learn to be loved for what they do rather than who they are.” Dr. Ramani Don’t you Know Who I Am?!

God it hurts. No wonder we hate change so much. It takes so much less bandwidth to adapt and survive, being mindful to undo this whole process is excruciating and right now there is no relief, because my patterns of that cannot be trusted, and if I cannot trust myself that is an agonizing existence.

So one step at a time we build consistency and security on a new foundation. So many times I lose sight of the architecture and throw my fucking hammer. I want to cry out.

And then there’s that breakthrough moment when I feel like Lady Gaga in A Star is Born where amidst all her self doubt and fear, she discovers herself. Goosebumps. I get a glimpse and then back to the pits of hell for another round of lessons. I’m pretty sure this is what recovery looks and feels like.

I hate it!

Can’t I just go back to not knowing. Life felt better then. But did it? Did it really? If it did I wouldn’t be here now.

We are on to Skylar Grey Everything I need and I got the love vibes.

I’ve been in the bath for hours. Today was a hard one. I got very lost inside myself, in shame spirals and triggers. I had a ptsd episode yesterday driving my daughter and that set off a shame spiral. 🙁 I’m ashamed of my triggers and my coping and so many of my actions. How does anyone actually forgive themselves. I want to lash out, cry, isolate, get into bed, but the world pulls me back out because I am needed.

My coping, but also my co dependence. How do I separate them? I just keep returning to path, truth, and me. But I’m so tired and so lonely some days. Not all, but some I am.

I went to a Coda meeting yesterday. I will be attending regularly and I couldn’t speak. I lost my voice because I was afraid I was going to do it wrong, afraid I’d make others uncomfortable with the breakdown I choked back. In a fucking meeting where that’s supposed to be allowed. I actually sat there and contemplated getting someone else a tissue, and then realized the very act of being there was to get my own tissue and allow my own tears.

Not speaking or expressing emotion made me even more hard on myself. Like a scared wild animal I just wanted to run, but I didn’t. I resolved to do better, strike that, to be kinder to me next meeting and try again to open up. The question staring at me was something about Gods will for me and all I could do was be locked down in my own will is all there is. There is only zuul:p Ugh.! Will I ever feel better consistently? Ever ?! Or rise and falls that are exhausting.

Will it ever be more than circling the drain and getting back up. These episodes of ugly crying break downs. This is such bullshit. Christina you’re just feeling shitty and that’s ok. You’re so much farther than you’re giving yourself credit for. Stop hurting yourself and allowing others to hurt you.

Just stay baby ….. I’m right here. I have your back. We don’t need the story or narrative or shame or anything else to stay removed from emotions because they are no longer not being responded to. You can do this. You’re right here. All the good parts that always were. You’re right here.

We are becoming whole. Just hold on through the pain. ….. just stay.

I forgot to mention I found a letter I wrote to my very first therapist from 2007. At the beginning of my first divorce and school. I broke into so many tears. My heart breaks for that scared lonely girl and is also learning to love her. I’ve been doing this work so long and have never left. That is security. 💜

I’m getting ink this week. I got scared again last time but I’m going to keep going and I’m beginning to fall in love with the process, not worry about the outcome. Trust is such a process for me. It’s slowly coming together. The line work for st X bi plane and the lamppost on a planet. On my upper inner arm.

Posted on

I am who I am, and who I am is allowed to change and move and grow….

Can’t make this up…. I was thinking of Dirty Dancing this morning and boundaries. Right this second I can’t even recall the exact thought (because a lot goes on up here), but Hungry Eyes just came on as soon as I opened this post.

So story time? Maybe. First, I put on a shirt this morning. I felt like looking human because I felt like it, and because admittedly I have new clients coming in today. That’s right I’m going to do some couples work and I’m a little nervous about it. So silly considering my confidence in my gift. However the events of the past couple years could explain my lack of confidence in that arena. But I just never forget that’s in my personal life not my professional one. I never was much of a compartmentalizer, in fact I hardly believe in it.

Anyway I put on a shirt that’s kind of feminine thinking that I wanted to look nice in a way I’m used to viewing as nice, and the shirt is nice. How it looks on the hanger and at the store and how it feels on turn out to be different and if that isn’t a metaphor for everything and life itself. See what I did there 😉

I’m not looking to ask someone else if they like it or not I now know if I want to wear it or not and am going to let it go because it’s not me. And it’s a nice shirt. I’d like it to fit or some external validation to help me to like it. But try as I might (and why would I, that is a million dollar question right now), it doesn’t feel right.

Also a top my to do list is to get some bras that don’t make me want to lose my will to live. That feel comfortable but also I feel good about my figure in. What a challenge already anyway. But how I feel in it has become more important than how I look to someone else because I can’t concentrate on anything if I don’t feel right in my own skin and clothing, and if I’m not who I am.

Getting to know me is starting to become enjoyable rather than a burden, exhausting, impossible, etc. I’m starting to enjoy getting to know me and I just smiled ear to ear as I wrote this so I know it’s true. what a relief. Deep sigh.

The blog post that was brewing this morning was other aspects of who I am and how desperately I want someone who knows that to show up and stay, without me having to do anything besides be me and work on me. And I will hold out for that.

Lately I’ve been sharing this as part of client work, helping them understand when their standards raise as their self love does, that it’s normal to be lonely when you aren’t accepting just anything, and how that’s actually a good thing. I tell myself as I tell them. It’s part of the magic.

I am coming to life, living. It’s been so hard to let go of this old self and the people who have been on the journey who began this, but in letting go I am free to live. I experience freedom. I can’t fix or change anyone or anything but me, and I can enjoy rather than being overwhelmed or daunted by that process.

Anxiety was running so much of my life, and I thought I was through with all of it, but really I was just at another opportunity to level up. This is me. Here I am.

Earlier in a session someone was mentioning how we would rather stick with a terrible president for example than venture into the unknown, because it could be worse and it was making me think of some emotional blackmail I’ve witnessed that connects with this. It’s so sad to me, how people won’t let themselves grow and change in the name of fear and anxiety. It’s brutal. And then I bring myself back to letting go of those feelings because it’s not mine. My work is right here.

Hey spaghetti arms this is my dance space and this is yours….oh hey I wrote my way to it. Boundaries. A dance and no one stepping on anyone’s toes or standing on someone’s feet being whisked around the dance floor. No matter how romantic that may seem. One step two step, and how follow through and self trust are the lessons of this season in my life, and how I’ll never compromise that again. There are plenty of mistakes but that particular lesson is laid down.

Lately in therapy I am confronting my damaged programming and my broken attachment system. It’s humbling and gorgeous and I’m the most me I’ve ever been, and I am enchanted by the work and that infects the rest of my life.

I have my voice in tact now rather than waiting for decisions to be made for me.

I watch my fellow co dependent travelers who would romanticize death if it meant they would permit themselves to relax, or who hope for a car accident to prevent them from having to go into work, rather than feeling the ability to choose and handle the outcome of their choices.

It makes me grateful for my healing to be privileged to witness the space they are currently in. I smile because now I know it isn’t a forever sentence, just a stop along the way.

Humbly yours, with my self in tact, learning….

C

Posted on

Path, Present, and Future: Musings from Provincetown

It’s blog o’clock, my favorite time of the day. I am writing from Provincetown. P-town. Wafting through the memories and thoughts old and new. I’m listening to Feels like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk, vacillating between that version and Bryan Adams and Diana Krall. Sometimes a song just feels like home and if you have to listen to it repeatedly. If you’re me that sometimes happens often.

So far today I’ve watched the sunrise from a new place, gone out to breakfast, and done a ton of walking. My next steps I believe are a shower and to rock my hard earned hairstyle (two years of perfecting that art), and to head for some sunshine on my skin. I think I’ll try to read almost the entire book of Another Day in the Every Day series. I have no need to rush, but allowing myself to get lost in something for as long as I want without judging it, is something I’m working on.

I think of the self conscious version of me I once was in this place. The version who was so uncomfortable in her skin and any semblance of belonging that she got black out drunk and embarrassed herself, and her own chaos was so off putting and she knew it. When all along she carried inside this true self that anyone could and would have enjoyed. So hidden. And I think of the song Creep by RadioHead and how both of those songs came into my awareness. How another fellow co-dependent (narc food) human being, her greatness lost to herself, how we crossed paths and how chaotic that was. The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg explains this. Two people of this magnetization repel one another, sadly because in truth they would be a really good match. But unhealed selves rarely can be still with their feelings long enough to know that. So here we are.

I think of how she would love this place. Anyone longing to express themselves resonates here I believe. In this case perhaps not even knowing there’s a longing…. that would be too painful to admit, and the waves of pain are intolerable without “a why”. Pain without meaning is simply suffering.

I think of how in the shop window I saw this morning at the HRC store mugs that say established in 1980 and how those also fit the date of births of two greats, and how I’ll shall have to procure a few for my home office to show some pride, perhaps the colors of the rainbow.

I think of how yesterday was National Coming out Day, and how much that process has shaped my brave. I didn’t begin brave, rarely if ever is that some natural thing I don’t think. I think like gene expressions it must be turned on out of necessity. And that is why I can’t hate my story, and also why I strive so hard to get it straight. I think of how I joke forward never straight, when telling directions, and how people tease me about it. And in this moment I think about how not wrong I am in that, with any direction in life. You can go forward without traveling in a straight direction. I just don’t recommend going in circles, as I found the last year of my life, you’ll get dizzy and sick chasing your tail. I said this to a client the other day, that they were chasing their tail and it has stayed in my mind thinking about it. Trapped in a cycle is nowhere fun to be, but sometimes it can be a necessary stepping stone. I guess you have to get tired enough of being angry and dizzy.

Some people never do. That thought makes me sad. The concept of lost souls makes me sad, I still can’t believe it, but it is healthy to accept it when one must, because otherwise suffering.

Ok it’s time for the Bryan Adams version, right after I pee. Also I literally can’t wait to put my feet in the ocean….. EEEEE. I’m very glad I have my Mad Rabbit Tattoo sunscreen, gotta protect my art. My therapist called it a coping mechanism (my tattoos) and I almost judged myself. That was enough to make me pause and think why am I doing this? Should I be? Do I even like them?

Sometimes I find for me that it takes awhile for my feelings to register, making it even more scary to make a huge and permanent decision. I remember years ago a psychic (the real deal yes there is that kind), saying to me that if I want to help people go feed them at a soup kitchen don’t move them into my home. I laugh thinking at this now, for so many reasons. I think don’t marry them until you fully know them would have been sufficient. I didn’t make a mistake in marrying anyone, those all led me to where I am now. I made a mistake in not being committed to myself enough to embody any set of vows. I stated them whilst not being in my body, and despite how I argued to myself over and over how different it was each time, it was NOT. I was not in my body. I was lost somewhere inside my painful mind and a powerful set of coping mechanisms that ran my life.

“We get into the habit of living before we develop the habit of thinking.” Excerpt from the Myth of Sysiphus as learned in philosophy at Gateway Community College, and read along with the Little Prince, a book that would change the direction of my life so entirely. A book that would begin the journey home to myself. So I can be in my body next time I make any vows. For now I just write a lot of them to me, and then break them over and over so I can learn what works and what doesn’t on this path of creativity during this thing we call living.

A created human becomes a creative human, despite the fact that all of that had a forced shutdown, a system override, those many years ago. I am told if that happens in childhood to that degree that the chance of change around certain things is quite literally a miracle. Watch me work. My life IS a miracle, the excavation of this self IS a miracle even when I don’t have the words for it, and occasionally being seen in a more complete way has become many a guidepost to getting me “home”. Feels like home.

I’ll make a home out of me yet, so I can make a home with someone else because I’ll always be a hopeful romantic.

This has derailed and changed shape often throughout the process. Isn’t that always the way. I have an idea, but the writing has a mind of it’s own. As we sync into alignment the words come. They have always been there, and they will always come.

Here in Ptown I am wafting through past selves, outdated versions of me. I weep for that girl who was so lost inside her pain. I weep for that shattered mind, and for the pain that is inevitable in a human experience. I wonder about the luck of the draw and about destiny and about the enormity….

This is what magic today has brought so far, which jogs my memory about time, how I always felt it was running out, how there was never enough, and the pace I moved as a result of being stuck in that speed. Being stuck implies a passivity that is not characteristic of me, so in this case I shall clarify to it took a long time for me to become aware I was a walking talking coping mechanism. It would take a life changing connection that unleashed a lifetime of wounding to rise to the surface.

The perfect drug, the perfect storm…… the perfect ending is that there is no end, only transitions….



Posted on

Everything is Possible Every Day…. Another Day….Someday

If there was a tragedy or disaster you probably wouldn’t know what I was feeling by reaction. Similarly if a really good thing happens it takes me a bit to register how I do feel about it. I have to wait and check my feelings for safety, and what is real, and then decide on a reaction. I have to peek out of the foxhole of myself for awhile first. And this process can easily be misunderstood for something else. It’s a difficult aspect of me that I never asked for.

I’m quite aware you’re just supposed to naturally feel what you feel. That safe process that most don’t know as a privilege was never a part of my wiring. And I always feared it meant something was wrong with me until I could get the knowledge and information to share about myself. Until I could believe I could be loved with all of this. I didn’t even see me how could anyone else.

And that’s the last thing on my mind these days I’ve never been more alone in my life, and somehow that’s not killing me. My phone barely dings and it’s never that high inducing looking forward to it being someone special. And for me after all these years there is a peace in this simplification of living. At first it was boring and meant I wasn’t special etc, but every road I went down led to less me, and that wasn’t an option.

So here I am becoming a solid self. Not rigid but solid. There’s a difference. Solid in that say what you mean and mean what you say kind of way.

I am reading Another Day, the second book in the Every Day series. It’s from the girl he is in love withs perspective, and boy it’s impossible to refute that the right books at the right time cross our paths. I won’t get judgy on myself about this being in high school, because really I have rebirthed and am now reparenting the younger parts of me, so we can all amalgamate into one big happy family.

I got Halloween pillow covers that say Dead and Breakfast, the black flame candle co, and a few others. I like them. One piece at a time this house will become a home, not the way I thought it would, but nevertheless.

I have finally snapped into gear with the administrative tasks of my life. I finally requested a rate increase from Cigna, fixed a billing issue with BCBS that has many claims in the ether. It’s ok one big pay day when you have to play hunt and find w your money. It’s like a fun game :p I mean I’ve never liked easy right?

These days I value peace of mind above all else. Peaceful inside usually peaceful outside. With the exception of the never ending battle w my first born over his bedroom. Battle of the wills and struggling to balance relationship that is healthy between us also. All as one person.

I can get better only a little at a time and I need to be ok with that.

Friendships ebb and flow as people navigate their own lives, but they are solid and stable.

I am on the brink of having “adult” relationships with my children. That change is not easy. They are no longer children and not yet adults. They are in between and I am in the meantime. In my meantime things are so quiet that life is expanded to all the delicious simple pleasures, like the home smelling good and feeding loved ones. I have settled down into the value of that without needing to force something that felt unnatural for so long.

Give me a home cooked meal, the chatter of my children and loved ones (at a dull roar of course;)) a cozy set of slippers, blanket, and mug of hot something. A fire crackling perhaps. …. Bliss.

Last year I could not crack a box to decorate or breathe oxygen and my children yelled at me and I heard it as personal. I didn’t hear I miss you. I heard you’re not doing your job well and I saw red.

This year I’m going to enjoy every little moment.

This year I’m imagining what kind of parent I want to be as they age in terms of being involved if they want me to. I imagine what kind of grandma I’ll be, and how consistent and what role I’ll have and I am excited.

I never knew how much I could love being a mom because I never had or stood a chance, and I’ve done the unthinkable and rewritten my stars and their very histories. All of our lives could have looked so different. There were so many forks I could have taken that would have led to less for them.

And I’m just getting started, really just beginning in so many ways.

For now I’m going to read my books, I can make my goal on the Good Reads app, love that thing. I’m 10 behind for the year so I’m thinking the everyday series and then the wrinkle in time series and actually finish it, and then East of Eden and perhaps I’ll finish The Midnight Garden on audiobook on my upcoming vacation.

I’m still vacillating between don’t leave me alone with me that long and sheer and utter bliss thinking how hard I pushed for that alone time even when I was stable and loved. The grass IS greener where you water it. For now there’s plenty of my own lawn to do that with. My writer self needs tending to, to coax her out of her dormancy. Writers are sensitive creatures, creativity flits like a fickle butterfly. It alights where and when it wants to and the energy guides it.

You have to make the conditions, make an environment that is suitable and welcoming to the work. Trying to force it has never worked. You have to listen and adjust, listen and adjust course again and again. If you can listen…. You will hear your knowing. But nothing can ever be forced in the realm of authenticity.

I recognize now I always had to force myself to even be ok… and I got so used to that way of being. It felt impossible for things to be different, but from this side I can assure you it is anything but.

Everything is possible…

Posted on

George Michael said You Gotta Have Faith…

My faith wires were crossed with control and terror. Rewiring is not for the faint of heart

It comes together and it falls apart. Life. The self however I don’t think should come together and fall apart so often, that’s supposed to be stable I would imagine.

I’m reading the book Everyday and it’s so staggeringly relatable I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s about a person who wakes up in a different body everyday. The person finds a feeling for a person and begins to break all of their own rules for this feeling. The person (who is genderless, their name is “A”) calls it the enormity, which I interpret to mean something beyond themselves.

A finds understanding of others through their experiencing of someone and describes concepts like depression and also many family dynamics. One day they wake up in the body of Rhiannon the person they love. To me that’s exquisite to imagine. It is unfathomable. And as a person who has always wanted the most full experience possible to get as close as possible that would be a dream.

In fact I think that’s the question I always asked as a child, what is it like to be that person. What’s it like to have a penis as I don’t know that. What’s it like to be adored by parents. What’s it like to be a star athlete. What’s it like to be stunning. What’s it like to be controlled by a wanting that supersedes all else whether that be a chemical substance or a human. What’s it like to be popular.

I don’t have to wonder about things like what’s it like to feel awkward and not belonging. What’s it like to be terrified. What’s it like to feel not only unwanted but also “bad”. What’s it like to be a product of and then bathed in fear.

In the book A ends up in a body that he doesn’t get home in time and so the boy wakes up on the side of the highway in the morning having no idea he got there. A tries to cause the least amount of disruption in the lives of others and has a code of sorts for himself to achieve this. He abandoned this to see his love, and as a result the boy ends up harmed.

Normally A clears his browser history of an email he uses to try and keep some memories of the self inside the bodies. He forgets in haste this time and Nathan writes him that he knows who he is and believes he’s been possessed by the devil. He spreads this all over and believes it so entirely that it consumes him and separates him from others.

To cling to a belief system for the security of whatever is secure about that robs him of so many moments and connecting with others. He’s angry and damaged by something since he can’t make sense of it, he comes up with something.

It’s an interesting part of the plot.

It’s no wonder I always wanted to like books, was attracted to them, even if I could be still enough to hardly ever read one. I’m working on that now and they are portals into human experiences that don’t cause harm. A safe resting place for a weary yet still curious heart. Calm and safe yes still being adventurous.

Why would I want someone else’s adventure. I always wanted to create my own. That was always my story. But I think there needed to be down time in between where I spent time with carving out what I wanted and needed. How does one do that with only a set of survival mechanisms and no stable set of traditions etc. without a system what is a self?

What parts are created and what parts are the enormity, the things beyond us that speak to us and pull us. To answer those calls and why or why not. The big questions that the great philosophers and the lowly authors have always tried to tackle.

A life lived in my own way not on anyone else’s terms has always felt important to me, but the how was a much more difficult aspect. Like a car without fuel. How can one exist in this manner without the fuel that is love, affection, belonging, and that from someone somewhere some form of that is unconditional.

I can’t change or want to change any of my path. But maybe I just need to believe it’s for a reason because that comforts me and there really isn’t any reason at all. That Pink Floyd has it right when he says “all you’ll touch and all you’ll see is all your life will ever be.”

I can’t have all the lives. I’ve almost had them really. But the one I never had is the one that looks the finest in the eyes of society. A long and consistent marriage that is celebrated… and I could go on… but I won’t at this moment, because I always wanted that one person you go through everything with and they are a constant. I made that a dream about love, but it’s fairly obvious that’s supposed to be a parent.

In the absence of certain core things I believe we can spend our life frantically searching or eternally unhappy no matter what, and the only thing that soothes is the story. I’m not willing to manipulate myself to feel better over finding the truth.

But finding my truth was always more important. This excavation process of finding pieces of me, and simultaneously trying to do that through relating because we see ourselves more clearly in relation to others. But that relation also changes us as we go.

The self evolves rapidly I find, or it can if that is the desire. Most people it seems are terrified of evolution, I suppose I’m not separate of that, but my enthusiasm always outweighs my fear. That is a piece of myself that is consistent. Would you look at that.

How do you get excited about being brave when sometimes being brave causes harm. The self versus the system. I’ll always be someone who has to know. Now I’m working at what do I want to know and why and being more responsible with myself first. To and for myself having a loyalty I didn’t have before.

If there’s no loyalty to the self there can be no loyalty to another because there’s no stable ground under the feet. You can circumvent this by religious beliefs and or adopting a set of family values, but what cost to a soul and why?

What I do know is I won’t regret chasing my dream. I know who I am. I know when I’m sorry I mean it and a swift change follows. I know once I know that I’ll enact change. I know my heart.

I didn’t know or trust those things before.

I know pain causes massive transformation if you sit with it and stay….

I am here with me…. Holding me, figuring out what comforts me. When I hear lines in this book about skin on skin and the enormity that exists between two people the tears start to slide immediately: I cannot change this looming winter into a permanent fall and spring, nor can I change the seasons of my existing.

I can only seek meaning from the experiences now that I’m not controlling them with every fiber of my being in one way or another. I’m being in control of myself and accessing my knowing and that’s the still I will stay in and the faith comes in believing I’ll have another season where I can connect this self with another self in a safe, healthy, equitable, and most importantly fulfilling way.

For now friends and love can be found everywhere as I’m willing to look. Rather than trying to change a season with my will surrendering to faith.

💜

Posted on

Nightmares and Dreamscapes of the Shattered Mind

“It’s never too late to be who you should have been”

The pain has woken me up. Or maybe it’s the words that woke me up. Or did the pain wake me up to the words.

Until the events of the past couple of years I never realized how much pain I was in all the time. I wouldn’t have realized anymore because I fashioned a soothing and capable self for others as a means of survival. I must have found it made the pain stop.

I had an epiphany as I was awoken at 4 am out of a dead sleep that as I only had myself to rely on I decided to make her so attuned and soothing to others because that also made me feel safe. As I soothed another I was soothed, and I recognized they were comforted, but I couldn’t recognize myself.

I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop in what I thought of as a healthy way. And perhaps it’s a lot healthier than where I could be. I’m driven intensely almost all the time to find ways of existing that make the pain stop. The anxious thoughts, the many physical symptoms I deal with regularly. The fact I can’t concentrate to save my life and my mind feels broken.

I found ways around the shattered self that lives inside to the point I was afraid I was a sociopath. Because I carefully select an emotion based on practicality before I’ll let myself feel it. I need to know if it’s safe and acceptable to others. If it will bring me belonging or desertion, warmth or isolation.

Are there others like me? Where are the other people who raised themselves, lived through terror constantly, and made a strong self in the outside and spent their life afraid they were bad or wrong? Where are the other people that coped the way I have ?

The things I found to make the pain stop weren’t numbing, they were the opposite, tuning in not tuning out. I wanted to make my mother’s torment stop. I knew that. And my aunts and my grandparents , and my little brother’s, and all the other chaos that swirled around me. I was determined. I am nothing if not determined. I clamp down like steel, my iron will and my nostrils flaring. I was years before they ever did so in a calm primal manner that meant anything but terror.

The problem with fashioning a self out of many trial and error tries, to make sure you don’t become what you’re from, is that your true self is lost. Many people don’t have their true selves in tact for one reason or another. I’m far from alone in the pain of being pathologically lonely.

The problem with all of this above is you can never really trust what’s real and what isn’t. And you’re vulnerable to the same fantastical thinking that probably took you to a safer place. See how I slip out of first person when it gets close to the wound?

My beautiful writer and dreamer mind, the childlike one preserved on ice betrayed me a couple of years ago. Is this real is the first thing I asked my therapist in the first session. The one where I would ask if I had to choose between passion and safety and what each of those things meant. What I was referring to was a feeling that shook the tectonic plates of my world.

The feeling was as real as you and me. What meaning I attached to the feeling and why was the ultimate betrayal. Escapism at its finest. Why couldn’t I just be a gamer at this point. That wouldn’t have cost me my sanity. Or maybe even an alcoholic. The jury is still out on if that would have.

I think I was trying to recover a sense of faith in something along the way, and I really clung to spirituality. Everything happens for a reason I bought into that when it came to this. And as it turned out it did, but the reason I was so very wrong about. And once you’ve felt so very wrong so many times and for so long, the joy, the manufactured joy, begins to get further and further away.

The only thing that brought me relief in childhood was being brought into other families and feeling seen, and the possibility of belonging. I became childlike and wide eyed. So when I attended a couple of family events and felt I belonged there, with someone telling me also that I did, and they wanted and saw me, I became attached to that notion and all of the players involved.

The intoxicating mixture of the words expressed and the want coupled with the family gatherings at the right time of loneliness and the hook was set, and the story was laid down, and I wanted to believe that magic more than anything.

As it turns out when you set out to find what to believe in, and it’s never in who you are, you’re in for a lot of pain. No foundation for me knowing who I was got laid down. So I’ve flitted from here to there trying to make the pain stop.

The thing that does that the most for me is touch. Touch forces me to be reminded I exist and I’m less likely to float away in my mind. It grounds and comforts. It is something I spent a long time not understanding why I didn’t care for it when I longed so much. These days I can be touched by kindness, even a smile and it gets me through.

And once I did figure that out nothing was going to prevent me from that joy. I was determined and racing through life because I wanted a story book story. The years together, the wedding where I am celebrated. I am never celebrated anywhere. It was the opposite. So when the attention is on me in that capacity I wriggle with discomfort, but also desperately want that, with the wanting of a child.

Whenever I started to get serious with someone and attempted to piece together some of my memories to explain to them my life it always felt unreal. Like a lie. I felt like I had made it up. I know I didn’t, but even the telling feels like that can’t be a thing. It must have made it up it must be me. I felt like snakes were crawling all over my body and I was going to vomit. And desperately I wondered if they were going to want to choose me once they knew. so I stopped trying. It’s too dark and I know instinctively people don’t want to believe things like that exist. Conceal don’t feel… don’t let it show. A child knows who the world (parent) needs them to be. We are much more attuned.

I never even got to know that because I moved things along so quickly out of panicky desperation every single time, all the while looking exactly the opposite on the outside so sure. Is it any wonder I can’t trust myself.

Part child, part adult…. My own personal science experiment. Let’s try this or that and see how it feels. But I don’t know how I feel. Let me look at how other people seem to feel is that how I find out?

Why am I so different from other people? I’d imagine the answering of this question will be a part of my work. I feel like my therapist would say Christina you know why, and I’d stare blankly that way I do when my brain runs out of knowledge and explanations and I long to just feel.

I very much veered off of the poetic musings about pain that my mind made me wake up for. That post would have been beautiful. It split immediately off into my thinking mind grappling to explain it make sense of it, and left the feeling.

I’ve lived my whole life trying to make the pain stop while also “being a good person”. Or feeling like I needed to feel like one. As it turns out I’m all too human to be a good person all the time. I’m a person who feels the feelings of others when I’m at a comfortable distance. As it turns out once I’m up close the stakes are too high on that and I can camp down immediately and be completely blank, and therefore banish myself from my own graces as a result, rather than trying to understand. U

nless of course I can be soothing to that person, then it’s the perfect drug for the both of us.

In my life time bridging the gaps of understanding for others split off from themselves or their loved ones…. It stops the pain. When someone outside of you sees you with the most generous perspective and truly understands, it lets the pain out. The pain of not being understood. I put the words together to help the person understand how their coping has been shaped and how their trauma changed their stars, and how to find meaning in that, that at bare minimum can lessen the pain.

The scarcity I’ve lived with is trying to get the pain to stop, and the irony is to become connected to myself so I can have a foundation I’ve been tasked with being directly in it until I become real.

Until I become visible to myself, and develop my own consistency outside of anyone else and my own self. Not develop that’s what I did before. Uncover what was already there. “It’s never too late to be who you should have been.”

Pain itself has changed and shaped me in so many ways, as well as the things I tried to do to get the pain to stop.

I have learned if you get or are in enough pain for too long you’ll do almost anything to make it stop. There’s no calm reasoning and then you lose faith in yourself to be consistent and dependable and it’s just a cycle of pure hell.

I’m in so much pain it’s like being burned alive, and you’d never even know if you looked at me, although I’m quite sure I look different now, that now it’s beginning to show in the lines of my face and in my weary bones.

It wakes me up and memories float in and out without my consent. I can only sift through the ashes, as the tears make them stick to my face. I toss and turn all night some nights and others I sleep soundly and it is the day that is the nightmare. A gauntlet full of memories that pull me back to a place that harms and I have to start all the way over.

One little fragment at a time I recover myself from all of this, all the while having no idea who I’ll be and rather than the idea of having a solid foundation being exciting, I just get to be viciously aware it should not be happening at this time in my life. That I’m all out of order, because I get to live seeing that confusion and loneliness on my children’s faces. They’ve had to fashion selves too, in the absence of me.

What’s normal and what isn’t during this time ? How do I relate? What’s safe and what isn’t? What’s right and what’s wrong? Chaos and anxiety.

These days my strategy is finding calm and soothing from inside myself. Finding the impossible.

Posted on

What Kind of Writer and Life will Emerge from All of This….

All the intellectualizing falls away and only I emerge. A singular woman with simple details and a complex set of coping strategies.

Life is simple right now. I sit on my couch and marvel at how on fire my mind was and how on edge all of my senses were a mere year ago today.

Today I watched Bourne Identity, with my son, after clients. I ate comforting fall type food. I stayed comfortable, and I napped hard. Hard deep sleep. I browsed hotels for the girls and I since the air bnb cancelled, annoying, but not life altering. Something better must be out there.

I sift and waft through memories, but no longer do I feel the battles and emotions of life and death. What is this variety of living. This might be my heaven, even in the absence of all I thought I wanted.

Utter groundlessness. Only moments of impact. I am just calm. There is nothing else. When I’m not calm, I’m really not calm. I’m a triggered frantic wild primal animal. Thankfully I am rarely that anymore. Life doesn’t burn as bright either, however it’s settling into something real, something spherical, no jagged edges. Something wholesome and good.

An assassin of the senses who is finally allowed to retire. “It’s over”. What is it? Possibility? Is that dead? No! But all possibilities thats are not healthy and transparent and what you see is what you get. All of that is over.

I’m also reading, because of course I am, a book called Every day. And a part I just read inspired this post. “I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available- the only way I am going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind. “

“I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear. The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on – and if only I could, I’d make a deal with God….”

“I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it. The enormity rises within me. The universe nods along to the songs.”

In some ways I feel like I’m office space that I have been hypnotized. I just walk around dazed wondering what to do next. Unable to get extremely stressed about details, and also unable to feel intensely good either.

I look out over the landscape of my life, At everything I’ve conquered, every possible ending beginning and everything in between.

I live in the present now, which means I live in moments rather than in stories. I look around most of the time and can’t even believe the possibilities or that this is my home and I have the means to make any decisions. I forget that when I become instinctively overwhelmed from old programming. When I forget that I have stability and options.

I’m working on refinancing this home: I can do that now. I’m looking at the possibilities more than the devastation and somehow that doesn’t feel real. I must be missing something. This is all mine. I created it and it’s stable. If I need a new refrigerator I can pay for it in full. I don’t need to take out a line of credit and wonder how I’ll pay the bill.

I must be missing something. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it probably will, it just won’t be what I think. It won’t be what’s on the radar and that’s scary.

Deep breath, and one at a time.

What unforeseen thing will happen that is unimaginable. It isn’t possible that fairy tales exist, only moments, and I’ve already had so many. Could things actually get good beyond my wildest dreams, as I do.

If you had seen what I came from. I never imagined I’d have all these adult choices to make, or that I’d even live this long. Now my overwhelm is from abundance and not scarcity.

Now I can what if over all the choices and no one to bounce it off of. Why is it so impossible to believe I’ll do a great job, beyond great even.

I’m getting sleepy now. I didn’t expect that because I napped. I’m so tired lately. I do need to move my body and get some energy, that’s highly out of whack right now, but I will.

I have this beautiful home, these beautiful children, and this whole world, and life says that could change at any time. I can’t be too fragile for difficult circumstances, however I can also still believe in dreams.

I think of the things people regret, and I’m listening to that in the Midnight Library, and of course it’s having me take inventory. I realize in my life there’s very little to regret. I was so lost in all of that. I’ve made mistakes, I have issues yes, but nothing so much worse than anyone else.

In my 40 years I’ve become a mother, on that first day, those first days, and every day after. I didn’t wait for perfect conditions. And for better or for worse I’ve left a legacy. I’d like to think better. I’ve gone after a meaningful career and found my way to something I love doing, and it’s in no way over. I can still do so much with it. And love I’ve worked as hard as any human ever has to crack that code, with all my attachment wounds.

I’ve done therapy. I’ve lived in many different states. I’ve met people. I’ve taken risks. I’ve tried and failed at many things, and succeeded as well. If I were to get that phone call tomorrow, no portion of my live is unlived. Nothing has stopped me:

The rest of this is literally just getting to choose what I want and having that choice and being capable to make it for the right reasons and in the right ways.

Everyone is all strapped in tightly together and come what may….

Come what may.

There isn’t a single stone of my soul unturned. I am not afraid. I have comforts. I am not dying any longer burning alive in fear alone in this over sized bed. I can go to bed at night and be comfortable. Don’t get my wrong it’s not my preference, but I also don’t need to abandon any parts of my soul to go after what I want.

Empowering.

I went back and got all my childhood pieces and United them, and I don’t need anyone to understand this journey, because the right people already do.

Watch me live now…. My life is beautiful. I burn off insecurity by the second. There is nothing left to fear but fear itself, which sucks the joy out of life.

💜