Recognizing Anger
I woke up around 6:20AM and felt an immediate desire to curl up and stay in bed all day. Not tired so much as a deep apathy for the day ahead. I just wanted to lie in bed and do nothing except maybe read something I wanted to read.
Can’t see the Way for the mileposts
I woke up just past 6AM with no alarm, just awake to the brightness of what promised to be a hot August day by Portland standards. I didn't feel too exhausted. I was alert but something about it let me know that I was still anxious just below the surface. I'd taken some melatonin the night before and felt like I had rested, but the grief and anxiety from yesterday still persisted.
I came into the office to find that important reports still had not been run as expected. I sat down to my day and let my mind settle into the tasks at hand. I worked on projects steadily until CK came to meet me for lunch. We walked over to Blossoming Lotus for another tasty lunch. I was able to have the big salad I was craving and CK enjoyed her usual, yummy barbecue tempeh sandwich.
Sometime during lunch, with a toddler making hot, impatient sounds, she said my email about having a baby together was sweet. I felt some of the grip of the anxiety let up. We talked briefly on all the things we have to figure out in the next few years and that could settle. This possibility, these feelings are ones wholly new and while not entirely terrifying, I feel keenly vulnerable in exploring them.
Sitting in the park after lunch for a few minutes I told her that I was trying to make space to allow myself to feel grief about my past. During the first 30 years of my life (I had started to say childhood and she pointed out that my first marriage wasn't supportive either) I wasn't able to really experience the sadness, anger, and fear. Not only did I not know any other way, but the times when I did experience those emotions I wasn't supported and at times I was punished for it.
Underneath my impatience is fear. Fear that my loved ones are eventually going to get tired of me going in and out of waves of sorrow all the time. That the burden of my need for support will grow to be too much. That I'll no longer fulfill them and they'll withdraw at best, leave at worst. So I want to "get over it", want to stop being reminded of my past, my pain.
I wish there was some kind of time line for this. A project plan with due dates, task lists, even meetings and go/no-go decisions. I want this process to be something I can organize, categorize, and understand the process of. I don't feel like I see that I'm reaching milestones. My therapist points them out to me, but since I am not actually feeling better I don't feel like I've accomplished anything.
Old Papers
I have been feeling low all day today. I woke up tired and with a sore throat, more evidence of having missed my allergy pills yesterday. I had gained more weight over the weekend. I felt irritated with myself, with what I have to work with in my life, with my career, and just cranky feeling. I got my work day going, calling into the daily status meeting. The rest of the day was filled with random problems and meetings. I called an end to it after trying to make progress with an installation and running into missing libraries.
In the mid-afternoon I had a surprise call. My friend, SS phoned to say she was going to be in my neighborhood and could she pop by so we could meet her new baby, Ezra. I got to spend 20 minutes holding her very active, 3 month-old boy while we caught up a little. It was just nice to sit with the baby, occasionally holding his feet and appreciating how small he is. I felt my mind considering what it might be like if this were CK's baby.
I had planned to go to the pool and try and get a good work out. I just felt apathetic and tired. I finally decided to stay home and deal with some boxes AM had brought in over the weekend. We're down to the last of them from the garage and I thought that maybe dealing with them would improve my mood. I quickly got sorted out making piles for recycling, donating, and trash.
It was in the second box I found the first letter from MM. Handwritten, loving, sexy and acknowledging the importance of our relationship. I sat there with it, uncertain what to do for a moment. Some instinct to continue to save this scrap of paper despite the fact it made my heart ache a little. I tossed it into the recycling bin.
The third box contained journal entries written onto pagers of a paper planner. A copy of the certificate from my first marriage. Page after page listing CDs purchased from OM, impersonating me, by the now defunct CD Warehouse. Strange to look at the marks I put next to CDs I knew were mine. Stranger still looking at my name on the signature line in OM's handwriting. Additional pages of bank statements showing unauthorized withdrawals and forged checks. I sat with them a little before feeding them into the recycling bin feeling the old memories churning. The echoes of emotions, betrayal and violation, rising up to the top.
Then came another letter from MM. This one done on a computer and printed out. More words of love. Promises that we would work on things, try to find a way through and words expressing how much I meant to her. Reading them I was also able to see some of the warnings that I would get over the time we were together. Her noting that no one could ever expect to really satisfy her now reads with an understanding of how I played an assigned part in her life.
It isn't as if I miss our relationship at all. It isn't fair to compare them truly, they are so different, but the depth of connection between CK and I is so much more than what MM and I shared. I feel so much a part of CK's life, that I am a wanted and included part. Her family knows about me whereas MM made effort to make sure her far distant parents couldn't possibly find out about her relationship with me. Just felt the hurt of the way she ended, or rather, let me figure out the relationship had ended. Rereading what she told me made me be able to clearly see and feel the sense of having been abandoned by her.
By the time I'd gotten through all the boxes I was feeling depressed, fat and my back hurt me. I had been feeling anxious after writing CK and telling her about the baby, thinking of a day when it would be our family. I felt such a rush of vulnerability in telling her, in revealing the way I think of a future together. In putting words to it, sharing it, I have a fear that I've said too much.
I'm trying to be compassionate with the depression I feel tonight. I know there is part of it that is rooted in irritation at feeling the sadness and unfairness of my childhood. I want to get past all of that and not keep having things bring it up. Yet it just keeps coming up, all the emotions I was told were inappropriate or I hid for fear of being yelled at, shamed. Some days it just feels like it is too much effort to do anything but try and be present for it.
Building Bonds
Today started with a little jolt. CK could sense something wasn't alright with me and we talked up about it until we had to get up to get ready to go to yoga class. I was feeling better by that time, although it was still a little frustrating to have to go back to the schedule of the day.
I find myself struck at how quickly she reads me, although she has often told me that it is the same feeling for her. To me the changes in her energy are so readily apparent, so immediately that it is difficult to imagine people not noticing when it happens. It really does support my Practice considerably to have loved ones who keep me present, who don't let me close up around my pain and fear into silence.
After yoga she and I went to the Coder's Summer Social at Laurelhust Park. When we went into yoga it was chilly and cloudy, by the time we changed at her flat the sun had come out and it was warming up. We had fun hanging out with local members of the Open Source community, ate yummy food and played an 8-hand game of Fluxx (pretty silly with that many people).
We headed back to her flat and ended up working on putting together some of the furniture we'd picked out at IKEA yesterday. Got the bed made, moved stuff and set to putting together the dresser. After putting nearly all of the drawers together we were looking forward to how to put on the rails. I realized, with my stomach dropping away, that we'd done them nearly ALL wrong.
I felt terrible. I'd been the one looking at the directions and missed that the sides were supposed to be turned the other way. Because of the plastic screws, which are a hammered in, we couldn't just take them all apart. I could feeling myself cringing, waiting to be yelled out or frozen out.
Instead we just swore over it. Put the last one together correctly. Drilled holes in another and put the rails on; it worked perfectly. I sat an on the floor drawing circles for the drilling to be done on the rest of the drawers. I was screwing in the rails when AM showed up to help haul away the old desk, shelves and giant cardboard.
It has struck me how we hit this bump tonight -- making a big mistake putting something together. Despite my reaction, my waiting for punishment of some sort, everything was just fine. We just got on with what needed to be done to fix it and it was no one's fault, or at the very least it was shared fault that didn't really matter. We both want to and are committed to getting past bumps in our road together. She talks to me, openly, even when it is hard and helps me to do the same when I get stuck on communicating and slide into silence.
The body’s fears
When I lay down last night the wave of emotion that had rushed through me showed up in my body. I could feel how tight I was in my chest, how I was pulling in towards that tightness around my heart. The sensation of being ill as a young child, vulnerability combined with helplessness, really shook through me.
I hadn't noticed while I sat there writing how it was affecting me. It had it me in a big wave that felt settled once I had some tea and a banana. I felt a bit more of the anxiety at going to bed; feeling stuck in the intimacy road block/bump I have felt. Mostly I felt tired, but the shift in position really revealed how that wave of childhood emotion didn't pass on, it just settled into my chest and back.
I scooted myself up to CK, my back along her front -- little spoon. The sensation of warmth, the length of her behind me, combined with trying to mindfully breathe into the pockets of helpless fear and vulnerability helped me settle down somewhat. I felt her drift off to sleep while my mind still was wide awake. I did manage to get to sleep within the hour, but it was fitful. I awoke stiff and achy.
Friday on the Bridge
I'm not in the mood to write tonight. Just trying to go through the practice of it again. The routine of writing each night. It is easy for me to type quickly so I cannot even use the excuse of feeling to tired to sit and write by hand. I just don't feel like it. I feel the resistance of it, not wanting to stick with practice, just wanting to sit around with CK watching a show and being close.
She met me at the office today after work and we bicycled around downtown having dinner, picking up rain gear. On the way back we stopped and stood on the bridge, letting me work with some of my anxiety of being up on it, feeling exposed. Like writing when I don't want to, the practice of riding over the bridge will lead to good things in my life.
We got back on our bikes and road across the bridge and on to CK's flat. I started to change into my nightshirt and felt really ill, nauseated and shaky. When I realized I was cold we figured it was blood sugar and I had a banana and some tea.
I feel better now but when it first really hit, I plopped down on the sofa and felt a big wave of grief, misery, and helplessness. Something about nausea that makes me feel like a small child in a bad way. Just a feeling of being ill, helpless, vulnerable that somehow very young.
Friday on the Bridge
CK met me at the office today after work and we bicycled over to the Bridgeport Brewery in time to take advantage of happy hour pints. Vegan tofu "fries" with cashew sauce and hummus. Nice to see a few items listed as vegan on the menus there, this is a change from the last time I was there a couple of years ago. Made sure to mention on the way out how nice it was to see more vegan items, I figure feedback will only encourage more things!
I've always liked the beer at Bridgeport and it was nice to enjoy it on tap there. They redid the entire upstairs, where AM and I had our wedding in 2001, into a dining area. The whole downstairs is opened up as well, lots of seating. We sat upstairs and looked at the window and the parking lot construction happening across the street.
The tofu fries were very tasty. Thin strips of firm tofu deep fried in very hot oil -- tofu made into tasty junk food. It was crispy, light, and not very oily at all. The cashew sauce was a thin, creamy sauce with a big drop of Siracha style hot sauce in the center. Nicely flavored, it went well with the tofu fries.
Yet another hummus plate. The paprika olive oil was subtle and nice. The hummus was pretty standard. I really liked the herb and brine cured olives were very tasty. The brine level of them was a bit much for CK so I got to enjoy the whole lot of them.
Then on to REI to find rain gear for bicycling. Found a good jacket and pants, so I'm better prepared for rainy days. CK got a jacket too, the same one I did. We may look a little cute with matching jackets, but they fit well and are bright colored with reflective bits.
Rode back across the Broadway Bridge. Still a little unnerving to be on the bridge. After about a third of it we got off and walked our bikes for a little while. CK kept talking to me, pointing out all the beautiful things you can appreciate because you're up on the bridge. We stopped partway across and watched the MAX and cargo trains go by. The wind was gusty and when a very large truck or bus would go by on the bridge would shake and rock a little, shuddering under our feet.
It was beautiful and intimidating. The movement of the bridge feels very unstable. I feel a sense of dread too. If something catastrophic was to happen being up on the bridge is very vulnerable and I wouldn't survive it. I don't want to leave now, I don't want to leave the people I love. However, living in Portland it is the way I will get into work regardless of car, bicycle, MAX train or bus. I love the beauty of the bridges and that they're part of my life. Like writing when I don't want to, the practice of riding over the bridge will lead to good things in my life.
Hit Pause, This Feels Wrong
I talked to my therapist today about the struggle around intimacy I've felt in my relationship. I told her how I'm really not angry I just feel a bit lost and miss the feeling of connection on that level. I immediately burst into the tears that were just barely contained this morning.
She summed it up perfectly by noting that she imagined, given all the things she knows about from the the years we've been working together, that I must be feeling abandoned. Part of it is the newness of the relationship, we're still fitting together so withdrawal feels very big and scary. Once it was stated that way I could see how it certainly triggers old programming -- the numerous times in childhood and into adulthood I'd become attached to someone they would either change & hurt me or we'd move away & I would lose that connection. It feels so big that it is very hard not to feel like it is my fault regardless of being assured it isn't.
What I'm also finding really difficult is that being reassured, reminding myself of my accomplishments, sometimes doesn't make me feel better. In the rush of relief there is also a flood of absolute grief and the shaky realization of just how much shame, guilt is in there. CK made a point this morning to remind me that the distance we feel right now isn't anything I've done and I felt tears heat up my eyes. Same as when AM makes sure I know he is OK, that he isn't angry with me. I'm just shaking inside with relief and the realization that I'd fallen back into preparing to be punished. Yes, it is so good and helpful to hear these assurances from my loved ones, but it also seems to expose a raw hurt that I'm not entirely sure what to do with.
My therapist gave additional suggestions to my idea that I should distrust my first emotional response. She said I should just hit pause in those moments so I can really check in. She also thinks that in that pause I need to remind myself of my accomplishments, how those things are true and whatever rush of anxiety or fear I'm experiencing is based in the bad information I was given as an impressionable child. AM commented that I can also remind myself how I'd felt afraid in the past and needn't have been.
I finally voiced the anger I was feeling. I resent that the rest of my life will be filled with moments where I have to question myself, rein in the emotional response, and correct it. Like having to do some chore, vacuuming, at unexpected moments, for the rest of my life. Yes, with practice it will become easier, but it will always be there and it is so damn unfair. In these feelings I hear my 11 year-old voice, sobbing out the words, "This is so unfair!" to an angry mother who refused to hear any other viewpoint, would not hear any words I spoke.
Writing a Voice
Last night on the way home from the dharma center AM and I were talking about the concept of the inner critic. I've noted often that I don't often get a tangible voice in my head telling me I should be ashamed, that I'm bad, that something is too ambitious for me, etc. Every once in a while one pops up, but now I am most often able to spot the absurdity of the statements it makes.
AM commented that perhaps I should stop trying to figure out why I don't get a tangible inner critic to work with. Stop comparing my experience to others and assume that I should be the same. Start working with the way my mind works, moving forward from what does happen. I think I hear people in my sangha talk so often about the work they do with their inner critic I feel a bit strange that I don't seem to have one to really work with in the same way.
Most of the time I get what feel like just rushes of emotion, wordless and omni-present. Occasionally my mind just checks out of the moment and is thinking about work, teaching a class, planning what to say at some even in the future. I don't even really notice it starting to wander off until I gain awareness of how far I've moved out of the present. I noted in the discussion last night there are times it as almost as if someone just happened to stroll by and pop a bag over my head leaving me blind, deaf, and speechless to the present. It makes it difficult to try and resist, work with it.
Now I try to first figure out what the emotion is, or at least what is on the top of the layers. I really try to stay present, check in and determine if the emotion appears to be excessive for the given moment. I have to pull down through more recent experiences and remind myself that something won't blow up. The first emotional instinct may quite often be out of place, an echoing call of the past intruding upon a future that is far safer. It is such effort to do this and I feel like I mess it up all the time.
The emotions, they're what I can call the inner critic; like feeling as if I mess up all the time. My inner critic doesn't yell at me; perhaps I can envision some sorcerous creature that summons forth the crashing emotions and unleashes them upon me. That's what I think was coming through when I titled a blog "Thrashed on by the inner critic".
Maybe writing is another door as well, when I write about the emotions the voice comes out more. "I mess it up all the time" is certainly a voice talking and not just the raw emotion of inadequacy, failure, and shame. Those are definitely the feelings that are coming through when I think about struggling with my anxiety. Expressing those feelings through writing suddenly gives them a voice. Not that I think I'll take up arguing with myself in my blog, but I do have the opportunity to be mindful of a voice coming up, saying exaggerated and hurtful things about myself.
command line metta
The impending rain was the last straw in my deciding not to bicycle to the office today. I'd woken up sometime before 4AM with a start (AM had crashed into the nightstand), then needed to go to the bathroom, then Phoebe waking me up to pet her. I dozed fitfully after that until the alarm sounded at 6:30. The thing that needed to give was my desire to bicycle in today.
I phoned CK to let her know, feeling a bit bad for doing so. The route to use had seemed a contentious topic, so calling to say I wasn't up for it regardless felt a bit silly. She was understanding, of course, agreeing that I am not equipped at all to deal with rain (either on my person or my stuff).
Work was filled with the usual work stuff, including an inability to access the documents I keep on Google. Some new measurements of the corporate IT and/or security folks. One more reason to give thought to looking to be somewhere smaller. Made some progress on some things, little on others. My head ached by the end of the day.
Quick snack at home, AM had made samosas and I had one with a little sambar. Then off to teach yoga. Tonight I rushed off to the dharma center afterward because they needed someone to chant and do bells. I volunteered because no one else had and somehow my mind things this is somehow a "make up" for bailing out on them last Thursday.
Tuesdays are seated meditation (zazen) followed by walking meditation (kinhin) then discussion, a bit more zazen, and ending with chanting service. I like the idea of this a lot, but since I finish teaching a little past 7PM each Tuesday it means to go I must wolf something down in the car on the way over to sitting at 7:30PM. Now having done it I can confirm that it really makes for a long day, even if I hadn't started out short on sleep.
We discussed the wrap up, well for me first discussion about the Bhramaviharas ("Divine Abodes") and I mentioned how difficult it is for me to apply these to myself. That I find it far easier to cultivate these things when I deal with others. Yes, things are still challenging when I interact with people closely, but it is far less effort to practice these states of being with others.
I especially mentioned how doing metta practice for myself is such a challenge, that is the time when I am most distracted. So distracted I don't even notice I'm no longer attending my meditation; I don't consciously distract myself so much as mentally shift to other activities. HB has suggested practicing in a mirror, but that really is difficult and even upsetting at times. GR offered the idea of doing it a different way, perhaps writing it out.
When we had our second sitting period I tried this. Not literally, no pen and paper. I envisioned the feel of my fingers on a keyboard, typing out the words. My mind saw the letters appearing on my monitor, in a terminal window. This variation helped, my mind stayed more focused on the metta practice and aware of the potential to wander off. After chanting service I made sure to share that the "writing" suggestion was very helpful.
And I'm finally in bed again. My right side especially hurts. From the side of the tail bone down the entire leg, lighting up the hip and knee particularly. I felt so drained from work today, not energized by it at all. I am trying to not lose track of how tired I am and how the down shift in the weather to mist, drizzle and rain leaves me feeling chilled and slow. These things and the rush of anxiety last week have left me feeling thin again. Some of the irritation at work is truly magnified by these things and not just work itself.