Into The Rabbit Hole

I’ve learned that the RIGHT decisions aren’t always the easiest to make, and they certainly don’t always have consequences that fall in line with what I have planned.  Sometimes the RIGHT choices are the ones that are for myself, and my own interests, even if they are not what the people closest to me would have chosen.  Sometimes the RIGHT thing to do for my own well being isn’t the right thing for anyone else, and that doesn’t make the RIGHT thing any less viable as an option (or any less RIGHT for me).

This experience is utterly about learning from our environment.  It’s about learning how to make good decisions, and knowing that what you choose not only has consequences, but requires you to think through the consequences prior to acting– and more importantly offers you the opportunity to make adjustments to your plans if an unexpected consequence arises.  It encourages you to own all of the consequences– good and bad– because you know that the decisions you’ve made are the ones you are responsible for, and therefore can appreciate whatever comes from them because they’re YOUR decisions.  It’s about knowing that there ultimately are many RIGHT decisions you can make for yourself and essentially eliminates and WRONG decisions from occurring even as possibilities, because when you’re making good decisions for yourself, the WRONG decision would never happen.

It’s much like when a friend comes to me for advice.  My favorite advice I love to give is, “I know you will make the right decision when the time comes for it, and I trust your decision making abilities.”  I know, that’s  not very specific advice, but what it comes down to is that I trust my own ability to make good decisions with regards to the people I surround myself with, and I trust their ability to consider their choices and own up to and learn from the consequences of any decision they make.

There is no sin, only experiences you refuse to learn from.

This last year was about changing the behaviors that weren’t working for me.  I could name a thousand different things I learned, and I do feel confident that when I acknowledged a behavior that wasn’t working, I sought out a new behavior to replace it.  I knew that even if it was the wrong new behavior, it wasn’t the old behavior, and therefore it would serve its purpose because at least then I would know.

It’s become significantly easier to address “mistakes” as such… to know that there really are NO mistakes, only opportunities.  This change of perspective has led me to making more bold decisions– and with great risk often comes exceedingly great reward.

So, I’ve identified behaviors that aren’t working, and I have worked hard to replace them.  I have been nearly fearless when it came to the replacement behavior because I knew that whatever I chose to replace it with was going to be fine.  I wouldn’t make a bad decision, because ultimately the things that were outside of my nature wouldn’t happen– and so I never even considered them.  The things that were possibilities within my nature, I embraced.   With great risk comes great reward.

This is the truth in all experience.

I lead a very happy life.   My sacred moments are filled with herbal tea and steaming baths.  My bed is always warm, and my clothes are always clean.  I eat well.  I sleep well.  Plants and books and people I love surround me, unwaveringly.  The sun always shines upon me.  My mind is filled with riddles to crack and the life-blood of joy.  There are children laughing excitedly in my home.  Peaceful music wraps my head, a drizzling of incense, and glimmers of waking life penetrate my atmosphere.  It is a dream, and it’s my reality.

So mote it be.

I’ve been in a sort of hibernation this week… Recovering from being sick.  This weekend has had me in bed by 8:30-9:00 every evening so far.  I suppose I’ve needed the rest.  It’s good, because I’m feeling better, and my skin is looking more clear.  Yay for that.  Sometimes I forget to get enough sleep… but it’s one of those important things that I need in order to function at my best.   I get caught up in being so busy that I’m at a constant “Full Speed Ahead” gear… and I forget that I need to take care of my body… I need to get enough water, enough of the right foods (and limit the wrong foods); I need to limit my toxins and take my vitamins… I need to sleep enough in order to accomplish what I want without being sleepy and so that I can think clearly.  It’s all a balance– between five thousand different aspects of health.

It’s not only physical– though your physical wellness is a huge part of health.  It’s also about expressing and experiencing emotions in a healthy way… getting enough social time, enough alone time, and making time for the things that are important to me.  It’s about being kind to myself and eliminating the negative self talk that I hear playing in my mind from time to time.  It’s about having enough faith in myself to know that I can and will accomplish anything I set out to do.  If that means working full time in a job that requires my full attention, my time management, giving emotional validation to parents who are going through the experience of having a sick child who needs a brain surgeon… then riding the bus on Colfax with a number of… crazy people…. arriving at school and taking challenging Chemistry courses, coming home to a family of two kids and two dogs and a wonderful man– and then taking on the role of Parent until bed time… well, that’s exactly what I am going to do.  I do it all, and I do it well.  But I can’t accomplish this without taking care of myself.

I think that many of us who have the Overachiever Syndrome tend to forget that one very important part of our responsibility.  We think we can accomplish it all and then sleep when we’re dead.  I appreciate the sentiment, but really, we can’t consistently behave like Super (wo)man without taking our health seriously.  Otherwise, it’s just spurts of superhuman performance in between being sick physically, emotionally, or mentally. Exhaustion isn’t very enticing.

Anyway, this is just as much for myself as it is for you.  I forget these things sometimes.  It’s always nice to have a little reminder.  Love yourself in body, mind and spirit.  Self love is imperative when you’re trying to be a rock star.

I believe that much, if not all, illness is a physical manifestation of psychological unrest.  I can say this, having caught some sort of virus, that what I needed– and finally reluctantly gave myself– was a break.  A break from my responsibilities, my constant movement.  I needed to stop and to be still.  To allow my natural resources to find balance again and replenish itself.

At first I felt extreme guilt and agitation… and rationally, I realize that these emotions were not helping the healing process.  After much thought, and a seriously hot, long, bath, I found my center again, and have begun feeling emotionally better about taking today off from everything.

With the emotional tethers let loose, I am now able to focus on allowing my body to recover.

Yunno me… always thinking.I had a rough start to the day.  I was feeling bad, though I couldn’t quite figure out why.  Could be the full moon, or maybe my hormones.  Could be alcohol I drank yesterday– or all the sugar I’ve had over the last 24 hours.  Maybe I’m fighting something off, or it’s the stress of the holidays, or even me just figuring out this parenting and significant other role…

Regardless of why I was feeling bad, I conquered yet another conflict within me: I felt bad, was able to express it, and then worked through it.

For a good part of my life I’ve been hesitant to express when I don’t feel good.  I don’t want to be one of THOSE people who no one wants to listen to because they’re spouting off negativities… I’ve never liked THOSE kind.  I don’t want to be rejected for my feelings, which is something I’ve apparently been conditioned into fearing.  That goes right back to my good old Fear of Abandonment issues… Alas, I recognize those feelings as such and have learned to identify them for what they are.

I’m feeling better now.  I knew the feeling was fleeting.  It’s been a challenging experience dealing with all of life’s stressors, all of the things that just add to the weight I place upon myself. I learned something new today about myself: be gentle.  Allow and accept the bad feeling, and then set it free. 

I’ve also learned about frustrations… about parenting and financial woes… that I DO actually have a breaking point.  Not that I broke that point, but that I have one.   Huh, and all this time I thought I didn’t!

These, to me, are great things to recognize.  To acknowledge them, validate them, and to allow them works far better than to deny them or to hide from them. 

As the evening rolls in, and my tensions are lessened, I’m grateful for the lesson about myself.  Amazing how I can be solidly into adulthood and still be learning about me.  That’s a good thing, I suppose… that’s something that I think everyone should strive to reach for.  It’s a good indicator that I’m still capable of implicit change within me.  To me, that’s one of the best lessons of all.

There’s a difference between feeling bad and feeling pain.

Pain can be very good. It can be necessary for healing, necessary for understanding the contrast, and in some cases can be quite pleasurable. Pain is healthy, in moderation. Feeling bad on the other hand, is unnecessary. It’s not useful, and unless you find a way to work with the experience, and ultimately learn from it, it serves very little purpose. Some examples of feeling bad are: generally having a yucky feeling, feeling guilty, jealous, or insecure, and over all feeling the opposite of good. You can feel good and experience pain. You can be sad, you can mourn, and you can experience loss– even heartbreak– and still feel good. You can know there is goodness to be had from your own life, and you can be comfortable knowing that the temporary discomfort is useful somehow– useful in a way that brings forth more good, rather than feeling bad.

My latest definition of health: health is when, for every single negative experience, you have two or three positive experiences… this can be actual situations you walk through, this can be things you say about yourself or others, or this can even be merely thoughts that flee through your mind… for every single negative, you can come up with two or three positives. That, my friends, is HEALTH. It includes emotional, spiritual, physical and mental health… all of these facets should have two or three goods for every single bad…

How healthy are you?

I do believe that all emotions are valid… and all experiences are worthy of experiencing simply because you have opportunities to go through them– learn about yourself through them, and to come out a more wise person in the end: knowing how to handle them the next time you are presented with such experiences (and you will be). I do believe negative emotions are valid, but I also believe that what you emit is what you emote– what you talk about affects the feelings of the people around you, and it affects you directly. It’s important to be cognizant of your thoughts and what you “put out there” because not only is it causing you to experience what you’re putting out, but you’re causing other people to experience it as well.

As a responsible, affective, affecting human being, it should be within your priority to be conscious and aware of what emotions you are experiencing, and what you are reflecting to others.

So… these are my response to “it’s okay to feel bad.” I don’t know that it’s wrong, really. But it just doesn’t seem right. When there are so many other ways to use your energy, I feel like using it in a way that is conducive to health would be the better way. *shrug*

Or maybe I’m just some silly hippie.

I have never seen myself so clearly. JZ posted several videos from our youth.  In one of them, was me. 
The first few times I watched it, I was embarrassed, a little saddened by my inability to dress myself in a fashion that would not leave me red in the face at a later time. Honestly, my first thought was that I looked fat… which really didn’t make much sense to me, because at the time of the video, I wasn’t eating.  I have seen pictures of myself as a non-eater. And in other pictures, I look quite the opposite of fat… I look sickly…skinny.

I want to tell you something about me… I’ve been thinking of how I was going to present this to you, and I could never quite find the words to embrace it.  Now I understand, clearly. When I was about twelve years old, I decided that I wanted to disappear.  I wasn’t quite suicidal, but I was definitely feeling very low about myself.  Instead of the more gruesome alternatives, I decided to starve myself.  I figured that the best case scenario was that I would become skinny and beautiful. Instead, I was wasting away.  I didn’t feel beautiful.  I didn’t feel lovely.  I felt like I needed other people– specifically men– to tell me who I was.  I needed validation, definition, molding… from these men that I loved. I was anorexic.  I didn’t like me.  And I didn’t know who I was. Read the rest of this entry »

I am an emotional sponge.  What you put out there is what I soak up. I can’t tell you if this is a new thing for me, or if I’ve just figured it out about myself. I have emotions that I own, too.  It must be something new or else I would have never survived my bipolar friends’ episodes. Must be. I wonder if I should be worried about taking my chemistry test tomorrow.  I’m not.  I’m not stressed at all about it.  The material is all stuff I genuinely learned well this semester.  A lot of it is memorization.  If I get fucked on not knowing the memorization… well, that’s just sad because real life and real chemistry does not require you to have the names of the gas laws memorized, nor does it require you to remember every formula.  Fuck, those things are things you can easily look up in your notes, your textbook, or your chart.  I get the concepts.  I understand everything, and can explain most of it to you. I guess maybe I think I should be more concerned.  I think that if I was more worried, I would be completely freaked and stressed out. I’m too emotionally exhausted to be freaked and stressed.  I’m too happy to be freaked and stressed.  I have no more negative energy to give to the freak out process.  I am confident, and realize that I am completely capable of doing well without the worry.  I feel like I’m living in a dream.  I feel like I’m lucidly dreaming. I am super excited for tomorrow.  Not only am I taking my final, which means classes are finished for the semester, but I am going to an Avs game.  With the most phenomenal people in the universe.  Really.  Like extraordinary.  And you wanna know who is going to be there?  My older brother.  Yo.  My brother who I haven’t seen since he got back from Iraq.  My big brother is home, and he’s alive and safe and seemingly pretty fucking happy.  I can’t believe it.  I’m so excited!!!  He’s alive!  I guess it just hasn’t hit me since I haven’t seen him yet.  I talk to him now pretty frequently, but haven’t seen him, haven’t touched him, hugged him, punched him in the arm… Going to Avs game with my brother.  And the rest of the people I love. (most of them!)Surreal.  Yes.  Lucid dreaming.  Not even worried.  Not stressed, just calm and confident. What is this life?  What is this rabbit hole I’ve crawled into?  Is there really such a thing as pure, real happiness?  A kind of happiness that doesn’t allow you more than one bad day at a time, and even those bad days are like pseudo/semi bad days, ones where there’s nothing really even wrong, you just feel blue, and coincidentally, they coincide with your menstrual cycle?  Or your lady friends’ mentrual cycle(s)? What is this craziness?  This dream?  What if it really is a dream?  If it is, don’t you agree that I should make it a big one?  I want the perfect life.  I want the perfect home life. The perfect body. The perfect health. The perfect friends.  The perfect lover.  The perfect job.  The perfect education.  The perfect long-term career goal… Yes, dreaming.  Not worried… because I already have everything I’m dreaming big about.  How fucking cool is THAT?

Why? I must remind myself it’s not my battle to fight.
I must remember that I can’t mend every broken heart,
Cannot tend to every bruised spirit,
Or fix things that are not mine…I must not try to change the world for every single one
Because I don’t own their thoughts
Don’t own their souls
Cannot soothe their every sorrowBut how I wish I could
How I try to think I can
How I try to be the knight in shining armour
How I try to mend the tattered pieces…

Things about alcohol that if you don’t already know, you SHOULD. 1.  If the whole point of consuming alcohol is for you to get drunk, you probably should NOT drink it. 2. Drinking to the point of throwing up should never be the norm.  If you do it often, maybe you should consider not drinking at all or stopping several drinks ago.  We don’t want to hear you wretch.  Period. 3. Your friends do NOT like you more when you’re trashed.  In fact, they like you less. 4. If you regularly drink so much that you get out of hand, you may want to consider slowing down.  Don’t act like you don’t know if you get out of hand or not.  If there’s a question, you probably do. 5. Don’t drink and drive. Really.  It’s fucking selfish, dangerous, and it’s wrong.  Just don’t do it.  And if I offer you a place to crash and you decide that you’re not too drunk to drive and you get a DUI– or worse, I’m REALLY not going to feel sorry for you.  I gave you the out.  You were too stubborn to take it. 6. Alcoholism is a sucky disease.  It’s conveniently treatable.  Don’t drink.  Yes, it IS that simple.  It’s the same with any other addiction.  Yes, I get that it’s physical, but it’s mostly psychological, and only you can decide that you don’t want to put those things into your body.  To not take complete and total responsibility for your behavior is not only sad, it’s lazy.   Own your behavior.  Own your body and mind.