Too Tired
Today was long. I was up early, had a busy day at the office downtown, my bus was late, arrived home late to discover we were turning around to head out to eat, and then the dinner friends came back to the house for more conversation. Between co-workers and friends it seemed like the day was filled with talking, talking, talking!
I'm enjoying chatting with CK now; reading about the rest of her day, writing, blog sites, and how much unix rocks. AM is watching something on the History channel. I'm just so tired out it is hard to think of writing anything much in depth tonight. Doesn't matter how many interesting things I talked about with both CK and AM today, my brain is just too worn out to put the words together much more than this.
Learning to Let Go
No post yesterday. I didn't really feel like interrupting a quiet evening to write, felt the guilt around it, and decided that really it is OK if I miss a day once in a while. Trying to let go of what my therapist tells me is a "Puritan work ethic" run amok. I just feel like I should have more projects DONE if I have such an out of balance sense of work! I just reminded myself that this is about practice, the practice of writing and not a practice of perfection (again).
My yoga class yesterday was a lot of fun. Hip opening, sun salutations, and supta padangusthasana (1-3). There was great energy from everyone; the container of the class felt like it vibrated with positive, shining prana.
After wards CK and I ate leftover rice & mock-chicken casserole and finished off the purple cauliflower & Romanesco broccoli from the market. After hanging out chatting for a while we decided that we wanted to see a movie and settled upon Hamlet 2, feeling in the mood for something light.
We quickly got ourselves downtown to the Regal on Broadway, purchased tickets, decided to get popcorn, and only missed mere moments of the previews. They've changed the seats and we liked the tables that now appear between pairs of seats. We felt a little worried when a pack of young teens sat down directly in front of us, but they settled down pretty quickly.
The movie was very funny. I was cringing at Steve Coogan's portrayal of a lousy drama teacher in Tuscon, Arizona. Talking about it today with my massage therapist, BM, who has also seen it. She enjoyed it a lot too, the silliness of it and we both agreed it is very well done.
CK and I made soup once we got back to her flat. We had been talking about making an African peanut stew she has a recipe for, however, we didn't really much feel like leaving the flat so I decided we'd just make soup out of what we found in the kitchen. It was fun to do and we enjoyed getting it put together.
We shared some wine and one of the Pink Pearl apples I'd picked up from the Farmers Market. While the soup cooked I practiced doing asana adjustments with CK playing my student with improper posture. We watched another episode of Six Feet Under, which I've come to enjoy a lot.
After such a relaxing Sunday I woke up in a panic at 7:20 this morning. I'd tried going to bed while anxious feelings, old shame forced on me, swirled around incessantly. I tossed and turned, waking up with starts, and then unable to get comfortable. All night I did this until I opened my eyes, saw the time and sat up with a start. I felt disoriented and ill.
I got into my email for work, sat in on the daily status call, and had the toast & almond butter CK made me for breakfast. I ultimately decided I was not up to the bicycle back to my house and gave AM a call for a ride now that we have the right stuff to transport the bike on the Outback. He gave me a worried look when I got in the car, a second confirmation besides the mirror that I didn't look well.
The day was full of meetings, planning, and trying to work with people on determining the best process to use. I went through it in something of a haze, my mind feeling a bit blurry. CK got some frustrating news in the afternoon and I was glad to be working from home so I was available to message with. AM phoned me at about 2:30, as I was finally eating some lunch, to ask if I needed a ride over to my massage therapist's. I suddenly realized I had an appointment coming up in 30 minutes!
I finished just the toasted, whole wheat, English muffin topped with avocado. I didn't want to feel full while having body work done so I didn't have any of the leftover soup more than two bites. The little bit of bread, rich with the avocado was enough for the time being. I wrapped up a couple of things and rode on over to BM's house.
She and I chatted about how I was doing physically and energy-wise. After talking about the pain in the hips and back I told BM that I felt like I was just spinning my wheels in this old pain even though my therapist says I'm making progress. While she worked on me several times I felt energy moving through my limbs, pooling in my fingers until I felt myself shaking them as if to encourage the excess to leave.
After I got home AM and I put together tacos for dinner, finishing off the avocados in the house which were perfectly ripe. It was tasty and quick since he'd made nachos Sunday night; there was leftover taco filling and re-fried beans in the refrigerator.
After dinner AM headed over to BG's house to go through all the donations sitting there for the Burmese families our Sangha has been helping. I was going to go with him, but he asked if I really wanted to since I still apparently looked poorly. I ended up sitting downstairs writing and listening to music while he was gone.
It was nice to have that quiet. Mostly I wrote about food since DG had commented to me that the reviews of what I make sound tasty, but he wanted directions. It is very good practice for me to do this, really start breaking down what I cook. Since I've thought of writing a cookbook at some time this is exactly what I need to do.
Writing about food, really thinking it though, has been very grounding to me. After feeling such anxiety, uneasiness, and shame I should never been made to feel, the connection back to making healthful food feels healing. I remembered CB telling me about how she would bake when things were tough or she felt stuck, that merely turning on the oven to pre-heat would help.
JW made a comment during the hip opening workshop that there was a difference between "letting go" and "getting rid" of something. I have been thinking about this a lot, trying to check in with myself and the ways in which I would just like to get rid of all this nasty stuff. Moving from hiding it, denying it, pretending it wasn't there, to trying to just excise it from my life. I still need to move towards letting it go, embracing those terrible things and finally being able to rest.
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.
Hard Work
The day started at 5:30 AM with Atari climbing over CK & I, repeated, meowing constantly and biting both of us. We had got to sleep late anyway having stayed up talking and being close in bed together. I woke up again at 7:30AM and made myself get out of bed to take a shower.
I felt bleary and unfocused, so tired and aching. CK offered to drive me in but I said I felt OK enough to walk to the MAX. I wasn't really sure of that, but was alright walking. My shoulder ached from my laptop by the time I made it to the office.
A day of rushing. Hurrying into the shower and into the office. Helping a co-worker get her laptop set up correctly to work on the VPN over a wireless network. Rushing out close to Tigard to attend a Business Objects user group meeting. Coming back through traffic to downtown to catch the train and walk to CK's flat. Quickly eating a little food, updating the merit list, printing the list and another update to the service chanting. Then off to the Dharma center.
Sitting was the first feeling of quiet I had all day. Chanting was easier, my being mindful of the percussive nature of chanting helped me in my flow. Afterward RC provided a couple of comments to me, noting something that all Ino's seem to do, a rising glissando on the names in the short lineage I chant. He thought BG and I chanted somewhat similarly the "heart" in Great Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra.
Afterward, surprising me because it came after telling CK that I feel very proud of her. I do feel that pride, she has worked so hard, continues to work so hard to understand herself and was faced with absolutely brutality for trying to express herself. I am quite often just amazed by her.
I do feel the desire to keep doing this hard work. Like the way I've kept doing yoga even though it makes me really hurt at times, same with zazen which at times makes me emotionally hurt too, and the same as keeping going to therapy to work on the old, ugly trauma. Those things have affirmed me and keep me going through the hurt. It feels the same way with my relationship with her.
Homework Again!
Although I'm taking notes in my notebook for yoga class I decided to keep a separate blog, Yoga Kuru Karmani (after a quote in the Bhagavad Gita), to track work there as well. I like being able to reference what I've written in an electronic fashion, especially being able to sort through all my entries about asanas by tag. I am able to read over what I've written even if I do not have my notebook with me. Besides, the multiple acts of writing help things stick for me.
The Day Turned Upside Down
Got up into half handstand more easily tonight. I didn't think I would because the front of my psoas was very tight it many of the other poses, but I was able to get up and my hips didn't spasm at all. Still hard -- whenever I try to roll my shoulders into place my feet slide down the wall! It is very surprising to find that it is easier since it isn't a pose I practice a lot.
Rain and Progess
I woke up feeling so tired today, still not rested from the weekend. This evening I still feel fatigued, although the yoga class tonight was fun. Due to questions from the students we ended up really looking at utthita trikonasana and ardha chandrasana. I don't often spend a lot of time on just two poses, but afterward everyone said they understood the poses better.
I also made some progress on my configuration of php5 at work! I've been fighting to get this right since may, finally figuring out how to do some of the Red Hat package installation myself and just loading a missing piece I needed. I need to add a pear package and I should actually be somewhat working again.
AM is lying next to me on the new, big sofa downstairs. We had leftover soup after I rode home from yoga. Walked over to CK's once class was done since my bike was still there. AM offered to come get me and the bicycle, but I really had wanted to try riding in the rain.
CK came downtown this afternoon and we went to Habibi again. We talked about her day yesterday, the frustration at the unprofessional behavior and how it is personal. Other than that tension and general career stress it felt for a little while like other tension was a little less. We sat in O'Bryant Square spending a little more time before I had to head in to join a meeting.
I'm still recognizing that Saturday was scary, neither of us felt supported by the other when we really needed it. Neither of us was capable of offering support beyond what was holding us up. We've never had something like that happen before and it felt very overwhelming.
I'm glad I went over there Sunday and we were able to just lay together and have it feel safe. Just the intimacy of holding each other and feeling safe is so important. I know I can only practice with the times I wake up in a panic there, anticipating punishment, and have to force myself to look around the room, listen to her breathing, and return to the present, knowing I'm safe there.
Long, hot zazen
Long, hard, hot day. Went into the office from CK's and had a busy day right up until I left at 1PM to ride home in the 90 degree weather. I went slow, took drinks of water and just kept going. My face was bright red by the time I made it home. Took a call for planning activities and then went to my appointment with my therapist.
She worked on trying to help me see that I have been making progress. That I was able to talk about the shame that comes up around intimacy. She noted that a year ago I wouldn't have been able to talk at all, my body physically was shutting me down with stuttering and terrible muscle spasms on top of nausea. The shame just feels so sticky and hard to move away from.
We also started into more stuff about my Mom, the tremendously inappropriate things she would do sometimes. While going through things this week I found the card from an anonymous bouquet she had sent to school. From her perspective she was providing me a wonderful, mysterious, romantic surprise but I recall at the time being very embarrassed and uncomfortable about it. More so when I finally figured out that my Mom had done it. She never did get why I would feel anything other than delight.
It has really been starting to hit me how not only did she try to live out the things she wanted to do as a kid through me, regardless of my desire to do the same things or not, but she tried to live out what she wanted from a romantic life using me. Pushing me towards relationships, wanting to talk about boys and that I should wear things to show off my body. All very uncomfortable for me. She played along with the "family joke" that I never seemed to develop a bust line and when I complained she was the first one to note that I was being uptight and should just learn to take some teasing.
It made for a very painful zazen. I was also acutely aware of CK sitting next to me, knowing she could tell I was hurting. And we sat. Somehow, despite a desire to run away into the night. Then I chanted and did bells, somehow.
Am going to work from home tomorrow despite the weather forecast of 100+ temperature tomorrow. Just feel a bit too exposed, worn from today to go in. Besides, if I stay home I can bake in the morning and make green tea cupcakes to take out to the Jizo-bon on Saturday.
Mere Moments
My co-workers pleasantly surprised me today. I'd been asked for input on a team appreciation lunch that some of them were working on. I said the vegan items sounded tasty, but very low in protein. When I eat that way at team events I'm often famished by the end of the day, which is bad since a few nights a week I'm going to a yoga class pretty soon after leaving work. Lunch was set up and I found that the organizers had changed the salads to include a three bean type salad as well as a chick pea & couscous salad! Lots of healthy protein and I felt really touched that they made that effort for me.
Thursday is for Bells
It was warm nearly all last night in CK's flat. I fidgeted being on top of the bed, finally getting under at least the sheet. Somehow that bit of "normal" behavior around trying to sleep helped me settle and rest even if fitfully. CK got up in the early hours, it had finally cooled considerably, and covered us up, dropping a kiss onto the back of my neck. She said I made a happy noise when she did so.
It would have been nice to slide from that sub-aware moment of feeling a kiss, responding to it on some level, into happy dreams. Instead I slid into taking a chemistry exam. Knowing I was truly in the wrong room, the wrong exam, "I don't study chemistry!" Yet there I was, trying to make heads or tails of questions, calculations, and knowing with certainty I was failing utterly.
Then it was time to get up and get ready. I rode into the office of the Broadway Bridge. The bridges get marginally less terrifying each time, just practice. Work was starts and fits of progress here and delays there (yet more again, same project).
Although I slept poorly, insufficiently, I don't feel quite the same volume of anger-static around me today. The grief feels less enormous again, just there with me. IW's work yesterday seems to have cleared a little of that energy up.
The ride home was difficult but possible. I was congested, the August air is rather stale from all the heat, so the uphills were even more difficult to breathe through steadily. My legs were pretty done by the time I got to the house, but no cramps or spasms. At times I'm not sure I'm actually enjoying the activity of bicycling but I enjoy being done with a ride and having traveled under my own energy.
AM had a rough day with his depression and I walked into the hosue into a storm of it for a moment. He settled after a bit. I tried to point out to him in a more compassionate way that I was feeling a little overwhelmed at the, to me, sudden and unexpected intensity. We just sat cool basement together for a little bit and let the whole day settle.
AM made us Vietnamese inspired rice noodle bowls, bun, for dinner. We discovered that the marinated tofu, nearly charcolized on the grill by accident, tasted quite good. A maple and tamari marinade would make for a crispy, "bacon-eque" type snack. We included cucumbers from the garden, which is really wonderful to be enjoying.
AM didn't feel up to, or had the time to shower for, before zazen at the Dharma Center. I quickly changed and brushed my teeth. Still having printer problems so I swung by CK's to print the merit list and drop off some things she needed. I had wanted to check in on her anyway because Atari had another UTI and I knew being at the vet with him, transporting him, and worrying about him all had been stressful. I felt bad at having to rush away from her, she looked so tired.
More compliments and suggestions of improving confidence at hitting the bells during service. I'm still so caught up in all the things to keep track of that it is hard to also have confidence. Besides, having confidence is truly difficult practice, same as pride. I am trying to remind myself it is only the second time I've done the chanting and bells together, something that is traditionally done by two people. There is a lot to learn and it is OK to learn it at my pace. I did think I felt a little more confident in my chanting at least; the stress of the bells distracting me!