Into The Rabbit Hole

So… let’s see here.

I seem to have come up with a bit of writers block here lately.  Nothing of substance is here to catch my eye.

True, I’ve been a bit pre-occupied for a few weeks.  (Has it really been a few weeks? Yep, two.) And life is good now.  And I feel normal again.  Like the me I knew before– from goddess knows when.

When did everything start spiraling? Was it two months ago?  Or before then?  I’m pretty sure I was on an even keel until around my birthday, and I think I spun out of control there for a minute.  The only people who know this, though, are those of you who read “the blog” regularly.  My real life interactions just heard me say, “This is hard,” and then I wouldn’t complain about it again.  Except for the dog poop.  I complained about dog poop a bunch.  It may have been the only indication of how miserable (in real life) I was.  Alas, that’s all in the past, and the present and future are looking lovely.

Now that things are back to normal, and my mood is picking up to its typical elated-because-it’s-summer pattern, I’m feeling mighty happy.  And as though I have some sort of say in my life.

I’m teetering back and forth between the teacher/student role.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be visiting both hats here frequently in the next several years of my life.  Must be my age– rapid cycling between roles and behaviors means less extended periods of time flailing; conversely it also means less soap boxing.  *hmpf*   I suppose we all have to grow up sometime.

Life is funny.

You think you know what to expect, and then something happens, and you have to change your course mid-flight.  I suppose there’s nothing wrong with this as long as you’re comfortable with change.

I was hoping for a little less ‘learning time’ and a little more ‘getting-out-of-my-head time.’

It’s not either/or, though, because sometimes it’s a little of this, a little of that, a lot of learning, some teaching, and rarely escaping myself.  Or at least this is how it seems.

It’s fine.

It’s grueling, and I’m tired, but I’m happy and excited.  The dynamic character I’ve allowed myself to become doesn’t quite know *what* it is.  Sometimes I feel like the balance is perfect- it’s right- it’s an indication of growing up… other times I feel like there’s not quite enough of one sensation or another to truly define how I’m feeling.  A flat affect… a complement to the extreme emotions in those whom I surround myself with… a boredom with myself…

I suppose it’s just as well.  As a woman, I’m expected to change my mind.  Or something.

I keep coming back to the lesson: It’s okay to be just okay.  It’s okay to be me, regardless of how I am at the moment.  It’s okay to be a contradiction.  An oxymoron.

Maybe it’s writer’s block.  The things that come out of my fingertips seem to have forgotten the brilliance I once had.  I’m trying too hard to control it.  To create pieces of beauty that I can re-read and not think, “blah…”

I have to be okay, though, with not knowing where to find my thoughts.  Okay with not feeling passionate or extreme sometimes.  Okay with less energy.

Okay with suddenly remembering a major responsibility and okay with forgetting it for a bit.

*sigh*

Oh well.

Drawing the line in the sand, I stand with one foot on the side of calm, cool, confident and collected; the other foot on the side of Bad Yoga Bob,* nervously flailing, sliding into the pits of failure, insecurity, sadness, and despair.

I’m uncomfortable not fully feeling in control. I’m nervous thinking that a part of me doesn’t know what to do in every situation– or worse, is fearful of the millions of ways that things can go wrong. I’m uncomfortable not being in charge of my emotions, especially when it comes to “negative” emotions.

In my recent past, I’ve very frequently discredited any of my negative emotions. I’ve treated them like they were wicked, red-headed step-children (not that there’s much wrong with wicked, red-headed step-children, they deserve love too, but

I digress). I’ve repressed them, denied they existed, and told myself I was better off without them.

To be quite honest, that’s what I thought was expected of me. I was afraid that I would push people away by expressing negativity. In reality, I was denying myself the very REAL experience of negative emotions. In fact, I think that part of what I was doing for the first part of mastering my powerful creativity was validating my invalidation of the opposite end of the spectrum. It made “sense”– if thoughts become things, then you absolutely shouldn’t think negative thoughts, especially not accompanied by negative emotion!!!

This perception can be a very vicious process– the moment you start to feel badly and CAN’T stop the feelings because you’re repressing them, you easily spiral out of control.

The truth is that negative emotional experience can’t be eliminated. And it shouldn’t be! Negative emotional experience is another tool in our tool box, it’s an invaluable part of being human. Does that mean that we should want to feel negative emotions? Probably not, but at least if we acknowledge their purpose and VALUE, we can work through them and move forward.

Feeling blue, sad, angry, anxious, irritated, aggressive, etc. IS valuable. It’s an important part of being human because it gives us something to compare feeling good against. If we only ever felt good emotions, we would never really appreciate what it was like to feel good. We’d be used to it to the point where it would just be normal and ho-hum. I’m proposing that negative emotion is the contrast that makes feeling good feel that much better.

This change in perspective opens up many doors to emotions and reactions to emotions. Instead of feeling bad about feeling bad, it allows me to feel good about it. To let loose. As AmberLotus so aptly put it (and I’m paraphrasing), “Gotta pour the crazy out.” If we don’t get those negative emotions out of our system, they just stay there. They build up. Eventually, we explode. This is not terribly conducive to long-lasting and healthy relationships– with anyone.

Many of the metaphysical teachers have said that negative emotions are an indication that what you’re in the process of creating isn’t that which you desire. Of course. Right. Can anyone freaking spell that out for me in English??

What *I* think it means, and I could be wrong here, but this works for me, so hang in there with me while I spit this out: Negative emotion doesn’t mean you’re creating something bad. It’s an indication that your focus is off, and that you need to pack that experience away into the recesses of your mind, and use it as a comparison– as a strong tool that teaches you that whatever you were doing when you felt badly WASN’T working, and therefore associate as something you’d rather not repeat again in the future. Negative emotion isn’t something to be feared– but to be revered. It’s a reminder that whatever you’re doing isn’t something that flows with you. Whatever you’re experiencing is something to perhaps be avoided in the future– not because the stimuli by itself was bad but because of how the stimuli made you feel… which was bad. Do you see what I mean when I separate it?

Additionally, any time I am feeling bad and then witness someone feeling worse, somehow my own circumstances don’t seem so terrible, and suddenly everything _for me_ is much better. We learned in junior high that knocking people down isn’t a permanent solution to our own happiness, and we certainly (with good conscience) won’t be wishing worse circumstances than our own on the people around us. It’s not the person with more horrible circumstances than me that makes me feel better– it is that suddenly my own circumstances are ones that I’m able to feel grateful for. And with feeling grateful, comes many more emotions that can be contextually compared with the times we were feeling bad, and the cycle of gratitude perpetuates itself. Suddenly those negative emotions seem a lot more important now, don’t they?

I’ve struggled A LOT with being okay with feeling bad: in my cycle, in my relationships, in my head. I’ve felt wrong for feeling bad and have been afraid to express how I’m feeling. In many ways, this explains why I’ve been so afraid to feel emotions– why I’ve been so emotionally flat for most of my life. Of course, its not always been as un-emotional as a rock, because I’ve had uncontrollable blurps on the radar where I’ve instantaneously and temporarily broken into tears or felt giddy– but it wasn’t until the last few years that I truly experienced normal emotion to its fullest. Slowly, I’m coming into my own and discovering that not only is it okay to feel and express feeling good but I it’s also normal and I am expected to feel and express feeling bad.

Still, this lesson is a hard one to teach yourself. As good as I am at self-therapy, I’m also forcing myself to step outside of my comfort zone– outside of what I’ve known to be true this whole life.

Much of what I’ve learned these last few months has been the purpose and value of feeling bad– and to become comfortable feeling it, without also feeling guilty for expressing it. I can tell you that this series of experiences have been something that I’d rather not ever go through again– especially not something with this magnitude. As much as I’m thankful for the lesson, I’d rather not remember this once I’m done. *Nods at the universe* Got the lesson down. No need to revisit it. I’m good now… *sigh* But if I MUST recall this series of experience, at least I can do so knowing that I’m taking the utmost value from it and turning it into a learning opportunity.

I suppose you can’t ask for much better than that.

*Bad Yoga Bob, or BYB is a well-intended fellow who goes in to his activity with great amounts of gusto and no grace. He is dedicated to yoga– in that he attends regularly, but he just doesn’t GET that yoga is as much a mindful thing as it is a set of physical movements. He just jumps right in, throws his mat down haphazardly, and usually doesn’t consider how his flailing about affects the other people who are near him. Because he lacks the patience to learn how to do the movements correctly, he often falls down on top of himself– or worse– on top of the people around him. He is completely unaware that he is being BYB because he is completely unaware.

**Paradoxical: adjective; seemingly contradictory but nonetheless possibly true.

***ambiguous: adjective; open to two or more interpretations; or of uncertain nature or significance; or intended to mislead.

****paradigm: noun; an example serving as a model; pattern.

I’m officially missing Apogaea this year.  It’s bittersweet.  I’ve gone the last two years, and it’s been such a huge part of my experience.

For those of you who have never heard of Apogaea, allow me to enlighten you.  It’s the local burn in Colorado.  It is a camping festival, where 500-800 people get together to pitch a tent for four days, wear costumes, leave no trace, dance to LOUD techno music, enjoying gratuitous nudity in the form of nude morning jogs, observe amazingly beautiful hippies and scantily costumed men and women, appreciate strange and exotic artwork, and be part of a cult(ure) that dances and chants while encircling a burning effigy of a phoenix.  It’s rather lovely, and the experience changes me each time.

I’m not going this year because I don’t want to go alone.  I didn’t have the time or money, didn’t have someone to watch the dogs, didn’t have a way to get there, didn’t have a friend to go with… and really what it comes down to is that I’m not going out there without my guy.

So, I’m sad.  At the same time, missing this festival is sort symbolic for me… maybe the death of a past phase in my life.  Not a permanent death, because I intend to go next year– but perhaps a sort of hiccup- or burp-death that allows me to regroup who I am– apart from who I was as the woman who went the last two years.

Who I am IS a bit different now.  I mean, now I have a family.  I’m part of a family.  I have step kids.  I have a home with dogs and a lawn, and it’s MINE… and I’m not sharing my space with retarded roommates, now it’s children who are part of my family… Not to say that all of those past experiences aren’t me… because they’re part of me, but that who I was then is very different than who I am now… To have gone out there by myself this year might have possibly indicated a failure to move forward and onward with my new Self.

Or something like that.

I am a completely flawed human being.  I boldly and frequently make mistakes.  I have outgrown the attitude of perfectionism as an ideal. I have in turn resorted to bravely standing out, doing the best I can with what I’ve got.  When I do not make the best decisions, I graciously encourage the people I’ve surrounded myself with the opportunity to teach me a better way.  The fact is that I don’t know everything.  However, as a human race, collectively, I believe that we have retained everything that we have learned throughout “time.”  If I can tap into the resources which define all human knowledge, then I’ll be a great deal smarter than before I started.

I suppose this is the next level of wisdom: to realize that there’s no way I’m going to learn everything in this one lifetime on my own… and if I’m to know more than what is there for me to learn this go around, I need learn from those who have already learned these things first hand.  It’s like tripling or quadrupling my effectiveness.  We are all simultaneously both the student and the teacher. 

Since I don’t know everything, as I have “succumb” to acceptance that I am not perfect, I feel like I’ve become far more comfortable with who I am as a person:  a perfect image of a (the) goddess.   I have learned to express my emotions in a healthy, mature, and reasonable way.  In the past I had run from these powerful emotions.  Now, I allow and embody them.  I am no longer afraid of them.  Not afraid of who I am when I experience them.  It is a beautiful place to be.  I finally am safe in my own skin. 

Who would have thought I would come to this place of calm– of comfortability– so easily?   I suppose “easy” is in the eye of the beholder and completely relative because in the last few years– even the last few months, I would never have considered my path an easy one.

Tonight, though, I feel differently.  I feel as though somehow I’ve slid right along this path, uphill and down, finding solace in every beautiful blessing along the way.  That can’t be such a terrible path, regardless of the ruts into which I’ve fallen or the boulders intent on blocking my way.

A few catalysts, and I’m here in this shroud of evenly metered comforts.  Both a pendulum and a metronome.  As dramatically as it swings in one direction, it also swings in the other.  There are no unexpected surprises, no major veering off the path, just a steady back and forth rocking motion that reminds me that what goes down must come up.  What appears to be a major, life shattering event, only turns my eyes towards the next amazing life-creating event. 

I’m ready for some amazing life-creating events.  I’m ready to see this whole experience as a lesson to behold– one which I’ve learned from and therefore never have to revisit.  I’m ready for the upswing so badly that I’m half anxious about what awesome things are about to happen as a counterbalance– much as I would feel getting ready to parachute out of an airplane.  Yes, I’m crazy.  It’s exactly the sort of eagerness that is bound to attract more beautiful memories into my experience.  I’m ready to live the magic that I’ve always known yet somehow lost in the last few months.

My life is beautiful.  It’s completely imperfect, and yet I’m surrounded with a handful of people who really see the diamond within my rough.  What I create is a crap shoot sometimes– and some of the powerful creations I’ve come up with are pretty shitty.  However, in appreciating my ability as the artist, I acknowledge both my Good Powerful and my Bad Powerful, and frankly, I’ve about had it with my Bad Powerful.  Now’s the time to lift my eyes upward.  Time to acknowledge my lesson, my boulder attempting to avert my path.  Now’s the time to identify my mistake in creating something I dislike while so many people witnessing my diversion and shouting, “You’re creating this, Ash!!!”

There are no regrets here, because within every identifiable fault, I am creating my own story– my own contribution to the collective understanding.  I’m gladly posing as the student long enough to figure out what it is that I needed to learn so that I can in turn move back into my teacher role– so I can share these marvelous discoveries with you all.

This was an almost perfect weekend!

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and I got my first sunburn of the season.  I was able to wear a tank top and short skirt. I played in the dirt, planted my garden, handled yard work that so desperately needed my attention. My lower back is sore and my body is utterly exhausted.  I’m getting thinner– and that’s nothing to complain about!!  My arms are starting to show some definition that I noticed this morning…

I love gardening.  I love yard work.  I love being in the sun…

It was glorious, almost perfect.

The part that makes it not perfect was that I did this all alone.  My guy is gone.  None of my friends could make it over.

Everyone’s got their own lives going on…

I suppose this is where I put more energy into making friends with people who can come over– who have similar lifestyles to mine… who enjoy playing in the dirt, being in the sun and… you know, are more like me.

Yesh.

It’s Friday night, yay!!!

Here I am.

Alone.

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that.  I’m pretty happy in my own company, and I know I’m doing this to myself because if I didn’t still have a million things I had to get handled, I’d be out soliciting my “friends” for entertainment.

So.

I guess I’m happy.

Lately I’ve been feeling more sensitive to people’s lack of consideration towards me.

I don’t know if I normally don’t notice it, or normally don’t care as much…

But I’m cursing at people more while I drive.  I am acting more sarcastically than normal.  I’m inwardly blasting people for being rude to me…

I know *this* is not me.  *This* is not behavior I like…

And, well, if I can stop the behavior of smoking, I better STOP acting like this.

*sigh*

I snuck my laptop into my bedroom.  I know this isn’t really very conducive for sleeping but I thought that maybe I’d be inspired to write more from the comfort and intimacy of my bed.  So, here I am… broadcasting from bed.

I can do this now, seeing as my guy’s away and I’m here on this holiday weekend all by my lonesome.

That sounds terribly pitiful, though I’m not sure that was necessarily what I was going for.  It’s just that, well, this is the beginning of my summer time.  I’m not quite done with school but am well on my way.  I made significant headway today.  I wrote up the experimental part of my paper and messed around with ChemDraw, a program that allows me to draw cool and crazy mechanistic pictures of the chemicals I made up.  I’m stuck on one tiny little part… inadvertently I used nitrate in my experiment, where I should’ve used nitrite, and while nitrate presumably wouldn’t have actually DONE anything, it did, and we’re not entirely sure WHAT I made, only that I made something new.  And that was awfully exciting, at least to my lab teacher.  And if she’s excited, well, hell, *I’m* excited.  And that is wonderful and stuff, but I’m still stuck because I don’t know how to write this paper if I don’t know what compound I created…

You all know where I’m at with my behavioral neuroscience paper… I suppose I’m not really ready to say I’m about to write that one, either.  I’m just… well, sort of waiting to hear something from my teacher there, too.  I am stuck between two places there:  On one side, I know that he has a purposeful task he’s researching, and on the other side, I wonder if perhaps he’s looking in the wrong direction for an overall solution to a picture that is much more broad than one can pin point down while looking at his research.  *sigh*

I suppose these are two problems that many people would love to have.  Hell, *I* love that I have them.

I’ve been in such a strange place lately.  I’m not depressed, really.  And I’m not overjoyed.  I’m just… I mean, how do I put this?  I’m a little blue, but I’m happy about springtime.  I’m determined to feel good and not be miserable this entire time.  I’m completely overwhelmed most of the time, but apparently that’s what I was going for because I created this experience… I am proud when I accomplish something “masculine” like mowing the lawn… and I’m proud when something I cook for myself turns out to be edible… so I suppose my self-efficacy is gradually picking up momentum.  So I’m glad that I can handle this stuff and all… especially when all of the challenging things seem to have rained down upon me all at once… I’m glad and happy and hell bent on surviving this well.  At the same time, I think maybe I’m a little bonkers.  I think I’m becoming more comfortable with that.  And it seems to be suiting me rather well.  Which is interesting, because all this time I was going for the Uber Sane role, yunno?  I was always trying to present myself as rational and reasonable, and as it turns out, I’m completely neurotic…

Of course, admitting it to myself seems to be doing me well.  It’s sort of like affirming that I love my beautiful body, only instead of losing weight, admitting that I’m a little crackers has sort of mellowed me out some.  It’s made me more allowing to myself.  That was possibly one of my biggest flaws– I totally denied any crazy business and then also forced a perfection seeking behavior to the point where, if I did make a mistake, I was completely knocked off my horse to the point of hurt pride, bruised intentions, and questioning my ability to do whatever it was that I was attempting to do.  Now, though, I make a mistake, and I’m like, “Meh, let’s try it a different way.” And I do, and the second way is a valid path, too…

What I think I’m getting at here is that as much as I’d enjoy being the top dog, I’m much happier being human.  I’m learning to embrace this hat, and I’m getting pretty good at it.  I’m liking who I’m turning out to be as a person, even if sometimes I’m a cry baby, other times a bitch, sometimes overly submissive, and most of the time, too busy to care how I’m coming across.  It’s quite the opposite of what, as a child (last year?), I was going for.   The over-achiever syndrome had its place in my experience, and it certainly got me to where I’m at now; however, as much as it was once useful, I think that it’s doing me some good just to BE, regardless of how I *AM* at the moment.

I suppose I forget sometimes that I should be a reflection of what it is that I want to attract.

Should I choose to actually demonstrate what I’m seeking to attract, I would be real, honest, loving, kind, considerate and gentle with myself.  Which I suppose I actually DO, most of the time.

Meh, we’re all human, and it’s perfectly reasonable for me to sometimes be off my game.  This comes back to the “I’m okay as I am” phenomenon.  Happily, I can say that acknowledging this comfortability with myself and my mistakes is coming a lot more easily… and I have succumb to far fewer self-beratings than I used to.

I get to thinking a lot… My counselor encouraged me to sometimes “get out of my head.”  Admittedly, this is a strange concept.  To get out of my head is to lose my grip, to lose control on my thoughts and to step back.  As fun as that is…

…I know she’s right, though.  But when I’m not listening to her advice (which takes up more of my time than actually adhering), I get to thinking.  I get to thinking about BIG things.  About pressing things.  About things I can worry about, problems I can solve, problems that are out of my hands.

For instance… Does it matter which Democrat we have running for office?  And what about racism and sexism?  Are we “evolved” enough to see past genitalia and skin color?  So many people just aren’t, when will we change?  And what happens if another Republican comes into office?  Will he fix what the last one did? CAN we fix it?  And what about the earth and her needs.  She cleanses herself. Does she discriminate, or am I also at risk?  And about this 2012 business… is it really the end of our era?  The beginning of some new consciousness?  The end of the world as we know it?  Will my greatest phobia, which is falling off the face of the earth, come true in a magnetic shift of the earth’s poles, as Einstein predicted?  And not only Einstein, but the Mayans, Nostradamus, and other clairvoyants/prophets all said something about this year.  And will it really matter WHICH president we have in office then?  And will it really matter which school the kids go to– or what my grade in Organic Chemistry was then?  And will it matter if they’ve found the elixir of youth and the right penis enlarging drugs and weight loss skin cremes and fat we can eat but can’t absorb???  Does any of this matter?!  What about my job, and money at all?  And what about these days lost without my loved one by my side?  Does it matter that time could be running out?  And what about pesticides and pharmaceuticals in our water….

*sigh*

I know, it’s out of control.  And I realize that worrying about any of this stuff is a negative prayer, and I DO believe in the power of prayer/ right thinking.  I want to reflect what I want to attract– the beauty and awesome-ness of this life; I want to experience every moment in joy and awe and wonderment… and as long as I’m thinking, well, I’m just not enjoying the moment as much as I could be.

So then what?  Do I become a happy hippie (which I’m already there, I think), and flit about the country meeting new and happy hippies?  Do I curse the almighty (albeit withering) dollar and start figuring out how to build my castle without money for stones?  Do I start watering my garden with only rain I’ve caught… and then remind myself that we live in the desert and that all of that water comes through our tainted atmosphere before reaching us here on the ground?  Or do I happily drench my thirsty roots with whatever I can provide them?  I am conflicted.

As much as I dread admitting it, the more kind I want to be, to this planet, to its people… the more jaded I think I become.  Sometimes I wish for ignorance.  It was much happier then.