My Picture in a Zine
My article came out today in the Sangha newsletter, Ink on the Cat. It seemed a little strange to me to see myself there, printed, in black & white, looking out from something I could hold in my hands. I'm not sure if I've ever had my photograph next to something I wrote. When I think about it, the only time my photograph has been printed is in things like year books. Once or twice in small, local papers when I was a kid participating in a school or civic event.
In high school and college I had things I wrote show up in the school papers or literary zines. Mostly poetry, I wrote so much poetry throughout my teens and twenties. I moved onto just having a website and putting up my own poetry there when I was in my twenties. The poetry seemed to just stop showing up, years ago. It feels strange sometimes to not have poetry swimming around my head all the time. Once in a while something occurs to me, just in a flash and mostly whole. Haiku shows up in those flashes.
At times it feels like the PTSD burned through that language. When the anxiety caused by it is at a peak it feels like I am entirely cut off from any ability to think coherently, much less communicate. Being able to get any words out is a physical fight. In finally naming what left me feeling like I was broken and trying to work on it, the words no longer arrive in the spare beauty of poetry.
And yet on all sides I am being encouraged to write. My Zen teachers and community, my Hatha yoga teacher, my loved-ones, and co-workers. Tell the story of my weight loss, my realizations about myself as I study yoga, coming to a place of peace. All of is why I write a blog, trying to come up with some practice that would help me figure out how to tell whatever story decides to come up.
I feel a little at a loss as to where to start. Really all of those stories are the whole story. The free-fall of personality I experienced, was because of my weight loss. That loss of my carefully constructed personae that I defined as me left behind the stark reality of my PTSD. Peeling back the layers of the trauma leads me inexorably back to my childhood. The way out of all of these things has been the yoga and Zen practice.
I feel a sick fear at my Mother finding out what I've written and still managing to punish, humiliate, or at the very least make me feel guilty for embarrassing the family. There's a voice that says that I should wait until she is dead to write about her. I guess I feel like I don't know how to write this story because I'm still living it and most of the time lately I feel like I have no voice of accomplishment to speak from.
Yet here is my picture, printed in the newsletter next to my words. Someone from the Sangha has already emailed a compliment to me on my words, adding their voice to both CK and AM's.
Loving-Kindness Sesshin
I'm tired tonight, fatigued. I still don't feel completely well, my throat hurts a bit. My brain feels like it is cycling in and out of stillness and throwing around ideas to write about. It felt so busy being back in the office today, being around several people again, that stillness is appealing.
I get tired of being at home everyday, working and sleeping in the same place. It is nice to get a break now and again. I suppose if we do find a large home, or turn some large building into a home, that has an office as well we'll have to really make it feel separate. An argument for having an office away from home, like CK does now.
Contemplating sesshin some more. I sent KH a message last night saying that I'd asked Hogen about Jukai and got approval. She sent back that we can talk on Thursday, she'll be at the Dharma Center, but that the immediate thing is to plan to establish my sesshin practice. I realize more than anything sesshin is the thing I feel anxiety about in taking Jukai. Those anxious feelings largely do to my fear around my physical pain.
Well, and maybe some of my dislike of crying in front of people. Combined with how crying sets my body off into spasms it generally leaves me wanting to avoid the experience. That the physical pain, the intensity of it, sometimes leaves me off-balanced and like crying.
When I read the sesshin schedule I feel a clench of anxiety. The amount of sitting is so much more than I've done. I'm anxious about muscle spasms that leave me nauseous, crying that causes my whole body lock up. The silence is fine, I feel comfortable in the silence.
I made myself look at the calendar, just get it over with. In doing so I believe I have found a sesshin that fits well. In April, a few weeks after I finish my teacher training program, Chozen will be leading a sesshin on loving-kindness.
Loving-kindness, metta, practice is something that challenges me when I try and direct it towards myself. I believe it underlies the ability to incorporate the traumatic events in my life. Hogen told me that I cannot try to "get rid of" these things, that they are part of the whole of who I am. To do that I must be able to extend that love to those parts of myself that talk in the language of shame, feeling inappropriate, of fear.
It is daunting, it also seems like a sesshin destined to have me in tears, often. But perhaps a silent week of trying to generate loving-kindness for myself, for the child who was hurt and is still afraid, will be a week of worthy effort. I put it onto my Google calendar.
Yoga Workshops!
The alarm went off at 10 minutes before seven this morning. I'd been anxiety dreams, something about being expected to present in front of a large crowd. When the alarm rang I nearly sat upright with nervous energy before my brain registered that CK running around to turn them off meant it was, indeed Sunday. I had quite a lot of time to snooze before needing to get up.
Eventually, past 9AM I got out of bed and had a shower, some toast with almond butter, and tea. Chatted with CK, who was feeling especially fatigued and decided to stay home instead of going to Sunday yoga. We decided we'd go do something in the afternoon around town, take photographs and hang out. I suggested that while I taught CK decide where we would go. Then I rode on over to the community center and enjoyed teaching the 6 students who arrived.
On the way to my classroom PB, who is one of the teachers and facilitators in the Ecstatic Dance community in Portland, stopped me to talk. She has recently taken over some space over in the Hollywood neighborhood and asked me if I would be interested teaching yoga there! We talked about my schedule being very full at this time, but in the spring might be possible. She also was very interested in hearing me talk about doing workshops for women recovering from trauma as well as classes for the trans and gender queer communities.
I was really touched, moved, and absolutely giddy with the excitement over it. I ended up getting my class going a little late, although people were happy to hear that I might be teaching elsewhere around town. More of that kind of "ah-ha" feeling -- the feeling excited and complimented over this, it is appropriate to take pride in this. It was amazing to have recently been talking about what I want to do and, poof, there it is.
The Small Mind
Chozen noted toward the end of her talk last night at the Dharma center that the small mind is like a very young child. When it sinks down to those feelings that bring suffering it needs to be picked up and moved to something like metta meditation. She said that the Buddha had taught that the mind either moves towards thoughts that cause us further suffering or those that move us towards happiness. When we pick up the mind as it spirals into fear or anger, turning it instead to something like metta, we are moving the mind purposefully towards happiness.
When we are able to do this we begin to reside in the space of the Big Mind. That place of boundlessness, within the heart of wisdom. Without judgment and able to contain everything. As Patantaji would say, the Essential Self.
There are nights I can't seem to shake the fear, the shame. Times that it is so close and I'll toss and turn, startling awake until dawn. Or rising up when I am struggling, aching in my back & hips in asana practice, and feeling tears springing to my eyes. Very certainly it is my small mind sliding down into an abyss. My skills at recognizing, stopping, and moving my mind are not strong enough. Yet.
I was editing some older posts in this blog and noted the times I've mentioned doing something like metta when I'm feeling anxious. When I've done this, it has worked and pretty well at that. I perhaps didn't drop off into blissful dreams on those nights, but I was able to more peacefully rest. I actually sleep. So, clearly it works.
Like everything else, this is practice. It is the same practice my therapist reminds me of, watching for the overwhelming shame, panic and fear. When I do recognize those things coming up, stopping myself so I can see that the emotions are too much, misplaced. If I add Chozen's direction it is at this point I should strive to do metta. For anyone at all, myself if I can keep focused on it. Just pick up my small mind, with deep compassion, and turn it an activity of the Big Mind, generating loving-kindness.
Oh, the hips…
Yesterday was a three hour hip opening, first chakra (Muladhara) workshop at Prananda. Last year during the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy training workshop I ran into how intense getting into this chakra can be. I'd ended up in tears being assisted in holding a pose I feel is a true ally (supta padanguthasana). I was a little nervous about this but at least prepared.
In a couple of poses, holding them far longer than usual, I felt some tingling of the panic that shows up with IW works on the trigger points on my left sit bone. I was able to breath through these things. A few times it became so intense I would just lay down or do child's pose.
It was during savasana, resting with a flax seed bag over my eyes, that I felt the deep grief well up inside of me, mixed with some of the anxiety and fear. I felt very anxious and kept trying to just breath through it. When it got to be too much I turned my head to the side and let the bag fall off of my eyes. I stretched out my hand to touch CK's elbow as she lay in savasana next to me. She felt me and reached her hand out to hold mind.
I dislike crying to begin with, it awakens all kinds of fear in me that I'll be punished for it in some way. That's how I feel at home crying. In public it feels so much worse. After we sat up and offered three chants of Om I lay back down on my side, feeling the wetness on my face. I curled up in a tight ball, just feeling the grief and shame. CK stayed with me, helping me find my way back through.
JW came over for a moment, just to check in and be sure I was OK. After the workshop participants, including CK, left the teacher training students settled down to watch more of the DVD. I lay on my side, shawl over me, and just was present for the words of the DVD. Tried not to go back into the fear or grief.
After some DVD watching we went back to adho mukha svanasana. I think I may have done the pose 24 times in a couple of hours. Reviewed the respiratory system and assists for downward dog. CK came and picked me up. I had my bike but was so utterly exhausted I knew I couldn't make it to her flat.
We stopped at Dalo's on the way home, enjoying the usual vegetarian platter. Spent a lot of time talking that night and got to sleep a bit late. Both of us taking more ibuprofen before managing to get comfortable enough to sleep.
CK was yoga'd out after Saturday's workshop and stayed home while I taught my Sunday class. It was a good class, broke down downward dog further as well as some shoulder things. Another new student today, G, a man who seems to be in his late 40s/early 50s. Unsurprisingly his shoulders are very, very tight as well as his upper back. He left saying he'd be back next week.
CK had been busy cleaning and making yummy tempeh hash. We had that for lunch topped with tomatoes from the garden, it was just such lovely comfort food after teaching and the work on Saturday. We hung out for a while, resting and talking, then walked up to the library then on to Mio Gelato where we discovered vegan sorbetto. We each had a scoop of nectarine sorbetto which tasted just like late summer!
After getting back to the house, CK brought me and the bike home, AM and I talked for a bit before making wonderful pizza. Whole wheat crust, tomatoes from the garden, grilled eggplant & "cue ball" squash from the garden, and some Tofurky Italian sausage. We've hung out in the basement watching stuff on Discovery while I've done laundry and wrote.
The way is hard but worthy
I felt like I'd run face first into something when I awoke this morning. My eyes ached, my face ached, and my chest & throat still felt taut with hopelessness. I felt queasy and tight fear sent fingers down through my torso to my hips. I had not slept well at all after conversations full of hard truths. Although there are times when truth seems gentle and easy, this is a time when they the truth has a edgy hardness to it.
AM took me into the office, I wasn't really in any shape to ride in. Usually I'd have worked from home, but there was someone I'd worked with retiring today and I wanted to be there for the get together in her honor. I got through the morning, talking with people and trying to eat my oatmeal. When I came back to my desk for a meeting CK had sent me a text message.
She was coming downtown to look at a new office and asked if I wanted to have lunch. By the time she got there I'd finished a nearly two hour meeting to finalize some business requirements and my sinuses ached terribly. I was thinking of leaving early, trying to get my head around setting up the tools and building a database seemed impossible through the pain in my sinuses.
We walked down to Veganopolis. I ordered the African style peanut & yam soup and she got a pot pie. I was still felt queasy and picked at my soup. We talked a little, I felt the words coming haltingly, fighting up through the tension filling my torso. I felt some of the hopelessness lift as our words met.
I decided to take the afternoon off and we walked back to my office so I could let people know and grab my stuff. We took MAX over to the 7th Avenue and walked to her flat. One Zyrtec, two pseudoephedrine, two ibuprofen, and laying down on the bed close to CK helped to finally get the sinus headache under control. We kept talking, finding the way together again.
She brought my attention to my fear, the hopeless belief things are ending that bubbles up to the surface so quickly. It is an area where we run into each other emotionally. I withdraw into certainty that the end is here, the our relationship is over. I get lost in my fear and of no help to either of us.
It has been underneath things for me lately, that fear. When my relationship doesn't hit these bumps things are can be effortless, we just flow together. So much so that I have been having a undercurrent of fear that any moment now it will be taken away from me. I don't think I'd realized how constant that fear had become until we started talking about it.
Another rising, wordless, awful emotion stealing me away from the present moment. Like the others, this conviction that she is leaving me will have to be added to the list of emotions to monitor, to evaluate and re-frame so that I am able to stay present, able to see that I am OK. She spent a lot of time reminding me that she wants to find a way too, that she isn't leaving. Hearing it was like a balm.
We talked about finding a middle way in this. Sometimes we will need to regroup, maybe re-evaluate, maybe even sometimes go back a few steps to gain perspective. I laughed about our middle way, a way others find far out on the fringe and yet the practice for us is the same regardless. We observe the precepts, we look for markers of the way, we practice.
Recognizing Anxiety
Woke up with a bit of a start when CK's alarm went off. Not being used to her setting one, much less one that made intermittent buzzing noise, I was disoriented at first. Then fell back asleep for a while longer. Yes, of course I know I should have leaped from the bed and gotten on with my day, but I felt so tired.
Mornings are like that. I really like the idea of getting up an hour earlier to do zazen and yoga practice before showing and heading into the office. It is rare that I have enough resources to get up some mornings, much less earlier. This is where my therapist would point out that I need to, once again, cut myself some slack since most people don't do all the things I do and manage chronic pain as well.
I have to admit that I am nervous about the teacher training starting tomorrow. I'm also feeling the hard work I've been putting in around my own intimacy issues, which is just draining and at times leaves me feeling emotionally raw and exposed. I can tell I've been anxious these past few weeks, my hands look a little bit up here and here. My dentist was also reminding me yesterday that that unless I'm chewing or talking my teeth shouldn't be touching.
On the positive side I made some progress at work today. Got MySQL up and running in my dev/test environment. Tomorrow I may even get to play at setting up a database and tables. I'll have a quick Denver trip next month -- they're getting together a team I was part of to celebrate our completing a project. Dinner out, the whole things. I feel a little small saying this, but I kind of wish we'd get recognized without a trip to Denver needed!
Validating the Inaccuracy of Input
I was slower chanting tonight, my teacher did not actually come over and tell me to slow down although each time I looked at him he was making a gesture with his hand to indicate that I was going too fast again. What got me afterward was D coming up and telling me how much she enjoys my voice during chanting service. That she finds my voice strong but mostly just beautiful.
I felt myself stiffening up inside. The veracity of the comments before me, and similar comments from other sangha members in nearly every week prior, were undeniable. Yet the present moment is in direct conflict with all the messages given to me over and over as a child.
You couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!
No one wants to hear you making that noise, keep it quiet.
And music, other than what I could listen to in my room on a radio, was denied to me. I was always steered away from choir in middle and high school. The one time I tried out for, and made, the choir for my school's annual winter holiday production the endeavor was cut short when it meant that I'd have to pay for shoes. It wasn't until I was at college, over 2000 miles away from home so there was no way anyone could hear me, that I actually was part of a choir.
I was aware of the stiffness, of feeling a tightness in my chest. "Don't cry", I thought to myself.
CK knew, of course. Before we even made it to the car she was asking if I was alright. We got into the car and I started to cry. I immediately felt really stupid crying over a really heart-felt, genuine compliment. It had struck me, listening to that praise just how false the input given to me for so many years was.
That was hard. Maybe it is because my birthday is a week away and it has me thinking I should spend time with my Mom since it really is a special day for her. But with the terrible echoes of shame coming up and memories of non-supporting, downright invalid information it is difficult to want to spend my precious free time with her. But I still feel guilty about it.
CK asked me when I was leaving her flat if we're doing better, she can't tell. I think we are. I to her the way her actions had left me feeling really alone and uncertain. She observed that it must have been really hard.
It was so hard and I felt terribly abandoned, all the more so because I could hear her breath but not her presence. Now we're able to cuddle again, so I feel reconnected to the intimacy we share. It isn't all about sex, it is about something she said to me when we were first getting together, shared vulnerability.
I've so vulnerable, exposed really, for so long now. Losing weight pulled down a lot of the persona I'd built up to feel safe behind. If anyone laughed at that person she'd flip them off, swear, and distract herself from hurting over it. But that persona is gone and when I'm around CK it feels as though there's very little left except the vulnerability. To have her share it with me again, in any capacity, does feel like progress.
Saint Monday
I went over to CK's last night around 8pm, riding over in the twilight. The air was cooling rapidly and I stopped to pull on something with sleeves. We managed to have a quiet, close night which felt so necessary after Saturday. I had planned to write about my thoughts, but we were lying together in bed and I didn't want to disturb that closeness.
It was a sweet, intimate moment before sleeping. We lay close, foreheads touching at times, while I stroked her hair, neck and face. Occasionally she'd reach out to rest her hand on my leg or side or press a kiss to some part of me, forehead, shoulder, lips. She said this morning that it had felt calming and safe, likely why she slipped into sleep so quickly.
We both had come to see Saturday as a cascade of my being overwhelmed, triggered by my grief. The grief and shame left me beyond the ability to observe what was happening around me. How unsettling this might be for CK, especially when she wasn't feeling up to the effort of being around a gathering and was trying to force herself to get through it. When I felt myself starting to panic, lying there next to her falling asleep I sat up and tried to focus on the facts. It was hard to keep a hold of them and not slide into unreasonable fear at my needing her and feeling like I was unsupported.
I finally was able to settle into doing metta practice, just focusing on the two of us and my breath. That we be free of our anxiety and fear, free of shame, free of anger, free of suffering, and that we be happy. I did this in between the times I would call the contingency planning hot line every 30 minutes for updates on the negotiations, dozing a little here and there.
Finally at 1:08AM the hot line reported that an agreement had been reached. CK woke up briefly as I was really trying to settle to sleep finally. I told her there news, unset my early alarm, and lay down. She stroked my neck and shoulders a little, dropping a kiss between them, and I again felt the intimacy of the moment, the comfort.
She awoke anxious. I awoke disoriented and exhausted through and through. The weather quickly turned into a loud thunderstorm. The claps rattling the whole flat. Atari fled and hid at first under the tub and when CK wanted to shower he hid under the sofa. When the rain came, hard, the wind blew it into the open windows which she rushed to close up.
As per normal on Mondays I did not get done what I wanted to be working on -- the error Apache gives when trying to load the PHP5 module. I ended up mostly working on reports and account issues in the new change control tool. I'd helped do a requirements meeting for some reports and having put together the notes from the meeting I wanted to work on the reports and views while it was all still fresh in my head.
Around 4:25 CK messaged me that she'd been told she was no longer going to be involved with a project. It was done in an unprofessional, indirect way, which made it even worse. Yes, I'm biased, but even if I were not I'd still find that it was not handled in a mature way. I feel such a protective emotion rise up in me when she's hurt or mistreated. There is a part of me that finds it a little silly since part of the reason I respect and love CK is her ability to take care of herself, she certainly doesn't need my protection. Regardless of that I would protect her from hurt if I were able to.
I had felt that while lying there in the dark keeping my anxiety at bay with metta practice. I have been so hurt in my past that I just want to be able to tell the world to go the hell away, pull up a big blanket to hide under. It is absolutely absurd and it is our interaction with the world that enriches us. But in feeling the hurt, all of it, there is part of me that just wants to say, "Enough!"
AM made soup, exactly the kind of meal I love when I'm tired. I sent CK a message that she was welcome to come have some, and hugs, if she wanted to. I know that both she and I withdraw when we hurt, that asking for comfort is terribly difficult if not impossible. When I spoke with her I was happy to hear that having that option was helpful to her.
Hard Tension, Inconvenient Love
I am feeling compressed, compacted down. I ache physically all over and feel emotionally depleted. I am so tired of the tidal waves of grief and sorrow that is left over when I manage to talk myself out of the places of shame, fear, and anger. All that is left is absolute sorrow and I feel utterly flayed by it.
On the drive out to the monastery CK tried to get me to talk a little about what I'd been really struggling with these past several days and I stammered my way through some if it. The ugly shame pushed onto me at such a young age and seething below the surface, popping up to paralyze me in traumatic incidents. The fear the accompanies it all, that I'll be punished and/or humiliated.
We never made it inside once we arrived. Instead sneaking around the building into the gardens we went. Tension dodged our every step, biting at our heels whenever we would stop. I sat, sobbing, in the leaves by what I think of as my Jizo statue, the one that holds my messages to myself and is near to the plaques for Spalding and Buzz. The past several weeks and the stumbling on intimacy I was feeling, combined with the choking shame I had talked about in the car, the immense grief, and the consuming fear all flooded through me.
We tried to come around the kitchen side and go, but there were people there with lanterns. Nearly ran into others by the zendo. Finally we got to the gym side and I felt stricken when JH called out my name from where she stood by the greenhouse doors. I was anxious at her offering concern, compassion at seeing my face covered in tears. I feel guilty somehow for sneaking around a place so special to me, leaving the cookies I brought on the bench to be found.
The drive home was filled with tension so loud it seemed like a thing you could touch, burn your skin against. With it, for me was horrible, hopeless awful sorrow -- rushes of guilt, shame, fear streaking through it. It lessened when we talked briefly, the horrible roaring wind noise in my head let off a little, but I still felt taut with misery. I tried to just breath and feel my way towards something more real.
Once we got to the house she came in and we laid down in the relative cool of the bedroom. We picked our way through the terrible weight of the emotions that had be bearing down upon us the whole day. Finding the way back to one another through the mental noise and breathing together. Eventually, when we both felt reconnected to the present, to love, CK headed home.
And here I sit in the basement. Checking the hot line by phone and URL for news of the negotiation. I dislike these nights, the summers where August is up in the air until after an agreement is settled. More than anything, that uncertainty every two years out of three is the thing that most motivates me to want to do something else with me life.
CK is at her flat, taking care of Atari in the high heat of today. I sent her a message a little while ago that I'm still waiting. AM has gone up to bed. The room is filled with the sounds of my fingers on the keyboard and the fans stirring the air. Occasionally Bodhi moves in his sleep.
I feel still but in a tight way, not spacious. It is amazingly difficult and the timing is so bad. I found myself thinking tonight that I hadn't wanted to meet anyone at the time I was introduced to CK. I had just had an awful experience at having been triggered at work which spanned over two days and got so bad as to include an auditory flashback. Up until last October I'd felt safe at work, at least safe from my past triggering me emotionally. When I met her I was feeling so destabilized and unsure of myself. Regardless of any inconvenient timing I love her, it is just so undeniably true that I can only work from the point of that truth.
I would rather be sorting through all of this shit in my past alone, preferably in a cave somewhere so it wouldn't affect anyone around me. I wish I could either get good at this grieving stuff or just get over it. I feel like it pulls me away from the present and I resent this much additional pain in my life, having to incorporate it into the whole person I am. Sometimes, like tonight, there is no amount of reminding myself that I'm experiencing it in the present because in the past there was no safe way to express it leaves me feeling OK about it in any way.