On Returning to Life (Blog #983)

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I spent this afternoon and evening with my friends Kara and Amber. The three of us first met in elementary school and, although we all live in different cities, purpose to get together several times a year. (Let’s get together, yeah, yeah, yeah.) Anyway, today we met at Amber’s house, carpooled to an Italian restaurant, and ended up staying for five hours. Y’all, it was fabulous. The food was wonderful, the company was better, and the refills were free.

I drank so much coffee.

Something the three of us discussed was the idea of holding space for something or someone, the idea being that our lives and relationships are often messy and that we need to allow room for situations and people to just be. As a fixer who likes to talk things out, this has been a tough lesson for me to learn. For the longest time when there was any amount of tension in a relationship, I’d think I had to DO something about it. Once I told my therapist it was awkward when a certain person was at my dance studio, and she said, “So let it be awkward.” This was a revelation. I didn’t have to DO anything. I could leave it alone. Today Amber pointed out that when conversations or confrontations are forced they don’t always end well. “You have to recognize when it’s not the right time,” she said.

Of course, if it’s not the right time (to say your piece or set things right), that means you have to be patient until it is.

Currently it’s 10:45 at night, and I’m absolutely buzzing. Again, I’ve had a lot of coffee. Additionally, I’ve had a lot of sugar–both at the restaurant and back at home. I’ve gone through so much peanut butter lately (I like to mixed it with grape jelly and eat it by the spoonful) that tonight Dad fastened the lid shut with electrical tape. “We just bought this jar last week, and it’s already almost empty!” he said. Then he brought my mom into it. “Judy, if this tape is broken tomorrow, we’ll know Marcus has been at it again.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” I said. “Everyone knows I’m the one who’s eating all the peanut butter!”

But seriously, it tastes so good.

Because I’ve been feeling better lately, a phrase that’s been on my mind is “returning to life.” I’ve said previously that before a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly, it first dissolves itself into a black goo. My point being that transformation is an all-in or all-our proposition. You don’t get to be a caterpillar AND a butterfly. You can’t eat your peanut butter and have it (sitting on the counter) too. Said another way, transformation requires the death of your old life, personality, or habits. Jesus died on the cross. The Phoenix died in the flame. There’s a saying that when you seek enlightenment like a man whose hair is on fire seeks water, then–and only then–will you find it. So if you want peace, healing, or God, ask yourself–What am I willing to give up in order to have these things? Can I die? Am I truly ready to be reborn?

In my experience with transformation, returning to life means returning to life as it is, not as I want it to be. It means bringing all of my newfound vitality and everything I’ve learned to the world as it is–messy, horrific, and beautiful. This is what holding space is all about–making room within yourself for the whole of creation. The fun parts, the not-so-fun parts. Life, death, conflict, emotions. Not that you can’t work to change or improve situations or relationships, but know that your primary job is to change yourself. This is gross and always involves dying (metaphorically). But once you’re reborn, everything is different. Behold, all things are become new. For one thing, you stop hiding (I’m the one who ate the peanut butter!). For another, you realize there’s enough room here (inside your heart) for the entire universe and all that it contains–the joy, the suffering. You think, Maybe it’s not all fun, but it’s all okay. You think, This moment is just as it should be.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Aren’t you perfect just the way you are?

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Free from Our Baggage and Bullshit (Blog #982)

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It’s 3:15 in the afternoon, and, like yesterday, I’m blogging earlier than usual because I have plans this evening (last night I went to a show, and tonight I’m going to a dance) and don’t want to be up until all hours writing. Not that I ended up going to bed at a respectable hour last night. Home by 11:00, I was wide awake until 4:00 in the morning. MAAAAYBE I had a smidge too much coffee at dinner. Or it could be that I’ve simply felt better lately and have had–at times–A LOT of energy. My mind starts thinking about things I could do, future projects, and then it’s off to the races. Recently I saw my therapist while I was flying high, and she said, “You’re as happy as I’ve ever seen you.”

I told my therapist that over the last two weeks I’ve felt like a cork that’s been previously held underwater and finally released. Like, WHOOSH! to the surface. She said, “That’s what happens when you’re not suffering.”

Last night my friend Marla and I went to see the comedian Randy Rainbow, and, like I’m wont to do at shows, I bought a magnet as a souvenir. Well, when I got home it was quite the chore to fit the magnet on my magnet board. Alas, after over twenty years of collecting show magnets, my board has gotten quite full. Well, thank god, I finally found a spot. BUT THEN–out of the blue–I remembered a show I saw seven years ago that I never bought a magnet for and impulsively bought it (on sale) online. But where the hell will it go? I thought.

This afternoon I remembered that well over ten years ago when I was still living at home I installed a magnet board covered in vintage movie-star-themed wallpaper on the back of a desk that we still own but whose back is to the wall. Of course, I got excited thinking that I could take the board off the desk and–somehow–mount it in my room. (I realize “mount it” sounds dirty, but I don’t mean it that way. Hell, maybe it doesn’t sound dirty. I’m single. I don’t know these things.) Anyway, down the rabbit hole of possibilities I went considering how I could frame the board and hang it and–because you can’t change one thing without changing everything–how I could rearrange everything else else in my room to accommodate it.

This, as I’ve said before, is why any type of internal or external change is stressful for us. Because deep down we know that changes are like dominos. You set one in motion and then it’s off to the races. You think, I’ll just rearrange this corner, or–I don’t know–go to therapy. The next thing you know, your world’s upside down. At which point you wonder if you’ve done the right thing. But trust me, you have. So just keep going and don’t you dare look back.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt.

While thinking about my magnet board project I started to get overwhelmed. My Inner Perfectionist told me it had to be “just so,” that there was a right way and a wrong way to do it and that it was MY JOB to figure it out. “Don’t fuck this up,” it said. Thankfully, I ended up telling that guy to give it a damn rest. Because there’s no such thing as perfect, and there’s certainly no way to do this project–or this thing called life–wrong. Granted, there are consequences (results) to our choices, but they’re not as grave as we might imagine. Life is meant to be fun, not so serious.

Along these lines, I ended up putting my project aside to blog for today. Maybe I’ll focus on it next week, maybe I won’t. The world doesn’t turn on my decision. Sure, there will be a domino effect, but–either way–I’ve determined it’s not a big deal.

Last night after the show Marla and I went through a drive-thru to get an ice cream, and–I guess because I have long, fabulous hair–the guy at the window said, “Good evening, ma’am.” Well, I just sat there, letting him figure out that I’m a dude (although I certainly grant it’s getting harder and harder to tell these days). Anyway, he took our order and later when he handed us our frosty treats said, “Good night, sir.” Some people would have been offended about the mix up. But as soon I rolled up my window, Marla and I burst out laughing. This is the power that we have. It’s not life or god who decides if something is a big deal or not–it’s us.

Our perspective determines our experience of reality.

While looking over my magnet collection last night, I remembered with whom I attended each show. And whereas I no longer talk to several of the people who occupy my show memories, I’m proud to say that my memories with them are still fond ones. Thinking of them or the time we spent together doesn’t trigger any resentments. This is good. Not that I want to call them up and go for coffee, but I also don’t want to suffer when I think about them. (The past is over unless we keep it alive.) This afternoon my mom found a picture of me and my sister that neither I or my sister remember seeing before. In it we’re both smiling and laughing big as day. My sister said, “We look so happy.” That’s the deal. Happiness is our natural state. Children know this. We were made to float, not sink through life. And we can. Free from our baggage and bullshit, we WHOOSH! to the surface.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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if you're content with yourself and you're always with yourself, then what's the problem?

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On the Law of the Harvest (Blog #822)

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Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

The above poem is part of A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (a long-named fellow). I memorized it in high school because my English teacher was a Nazi about her students memorizing poems. We’d start every class by reciting them. One line, two lines, one paragraph at a time. Each day or week we’d add on until our entire class had an entire poem memorized. Then it was on to another. Anyway, this particular poem has been on my mind the last few days because I heard someone on a podcast mention it and looked it back up. Sure enough, after just one reading, my mind remembered the whole thing.

Thank you, Mrs. Shipman.

In yesterday’s blog I said I wasn’t feeling great. Well, damn it, I woke up today with a sinus infection. So after breakfast I went hunting for kimchi, since it contains a bacteria (if you’re lucky enough to get a recently-made batch) that’s helped me a number of times in the past . Anyway, we’ll see what happens. If things don’t improve within the next two days, I’ll know I need to go a different route.

Recently I read a book about how to cure, or at least dramatically improve, essential tremors, an inherited condition I, well, inherited and basically amounts to involuntary shaking. My dad’s case is pretty bad–sometimes he can’t hold a cup of coffee–but my case isn’t as severe. Still, I don’t want it to get worse, so I’m trying to learn about its causes and treatments. Back to the book, the author suggests cutting out or drastically cutting back on–coffee, alcohol, liquids stored in plastic containers (like bottled water or milk), and all products containing heavy metals like aluminum (for example, most frying pans, soda cans, and deodorants). And whereas I’ve been thinking about attempting this plan, I haven’t quite been ready to bite the bullet because–in a word–coffee.

Y’all, I gave up coffee after my knee surgery last December for a few months. It wasn’t terrible. I drank a lot of tea. Still, I fundamentally enjoy coffee, so I let it creep back in. By creep I mean that I at first had a couple cups a week, and for the last three months I’ve had–on average–a pot a day. By myself. This, of course, doesn’t help the shaking, nor does it help my sleep patterns. Oh well. I’m not a perfect person.

All this (and I know it’s a lot) to say that when I woke up with a sinus infection today I thought, Let’s give up coffee! Because coffee doesn’t sound good when I’m sick, and if I’m going to go through caffeine withdrawals, I might as well do it when I’m already sick. You know, just suck it up and be one miserable-ass sonofabitch (nothing personal, Mom), which I’m quite sure is what I have been all day today. This afternoon my family had a cookout, and I don’t think I said three words to anybody. Still, this was authentic for me. I felt cranky. I acted cranky. To minimize the fallout, I kept to myself.

After the cookout, I took a nap. That helped. Then I painted a friend’s cabinets for a couple hours, long enough to apply one full coat over the already applied primer. Alas, I’m sure another coat will be needed. Now I’m blogging and doing laundry. Just before I sat down to write, I moved my clothes from the washer to the dryer and hung my shirts to air-dry on hangers. Whenever I don’t feel well (or am going through caffeine withdrawals, or both), I feel generally overwhelmed, so I keep thinking about all the projects I’ve started I haven’t finished–books I’m in the middle of, weight I haven’t lost. I’ve especially been worrying about the short story I started that I’ve yet to complete for the writing class I’m taking and is technically due this Tuesday. Seriously, it may not happen.

Who wants to write when you’re sick?

The line from Longfellow’s poem that’s been stuck in my head is “learn to labor and to wait.” In my experience, the waiting is the hard part. For example, with my sinus infection, there are certain actions I can take, but ultimately I have to give my body time to (hopefully) rebalance itself. With my essential tremors, the lifestyle changes may help, but nothing’s going to happen over night. Like painting cabinets, washing clothes, reading a book, or writing a short story (did I give enough examples?), everything is a process. Poems are memorized one line at a time. And whereas I wish almost everything happened at a faster pace, I’m learning to trust that if one is willing to both labor and wait, the desired results will come. This is the law of the harvest. You reap what you sow.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Just as there’s day and night literally, there’s also day and night emotionally. Like the sun, one minute we’re up, the next minute we’re down. Our perspectives change constantly. There’s nothing wrong with this. The constellations get turned around once a day, so why can’t you and I? Under heaven, there’s room enough for everything–the sun, the moon and stars, and all our emotions. Yes, the universe–our home–is large enough to hold every bit of us.

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Every Dip and Turn (Blog #399)

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Last night after dinner in Fayetteville I had coffee for the first time in ten days–two cups. It was delicious. When I got home my stomach was a little upset, and then I couldn’t fall asleep until four in the morning. (BZZZ!) But once I did pass out, I was out solid–I didn’t wake up until two this afternoon. Talk about glorious. What’s more, Mom and Dad were gone, so I had the house to myself! I realize this is something a teenager would normally say while simultaneously making plans to have a keg delivered. But I, being the responsible thirty-seven-year-old that I am, simply enjoyed reading a book in peace and quiet.

Other than reading, the biggest thing that happened today was that I went to the grocery store to stock up on Autoimmune Paleo supplies (broccoli!), and a cute guy said hello to me. There I am standing next to the canned fruits with my headphones in, and this total stranger starts talking to me. Well, it’s not like we had a conversation. He said, “How are you?” and I said, “Good, how are you?” I was so startled by the interaction, I didn’t even register his response. The next thing I knew, he was strolling toward the avocados. Thinking he DID look familiar, I almost chased him down to ask his name, but then convinced myself that he was a store employee.

You know, because the only men to ever engage me in random conversation are the ones that are paid to do so.

“Would you prefer paper or plastic, Sir?”

I often think this question sounds a lot like, “May I have your number?” Perhaps this is why I’m in therapy.

But I digress.

Later, after scoping out several shelf-stockers and item-checkers, I decided the guy wasn’t an employee, that we probably knew each other from “somewhere.” I also decided he was straight, since most people are. This is a thought I have a lot, that the whole world is straight and that if I’m ever going to meet someone, it will “just happen” and I won’t have to put myself out there.

We see how well this strategy has worked so far.

I think about this shit a lot, how much to leave up to the universe, how much to be proactive about. Not just with my (non) dating life, but with everything. Today I’ve been “blah,” and I think it’s because I’ve been worried about my body and my future. Stuck at home with nothing better to do and tired of not having the answers I want, I’ve obsessed over every little thing in my life that continues to be–in my opinion–broken. I don’t recommend this behavior to anyone else, but I did it still.

Patience is a worn-out old broad with three chins.

Looking back at my life, every major “thing” has either “just happened” or been so easy that it might as well have. Learning to dance, teaching dance, opening my studio–all of it just fell in my lap. Not that I didn’t have to put work into each of those endeavors–I did–but everything lined up; it wasn’t forced. And every time I’ve pushed to meet some guy or tried too hard? Disasters. Should-have-been-in-therapy-years-ago disasters. So I really am trying to strike a balance, to do what I can and then let go. In all things personal and health and job-related, I really am trying to be patient with the speed of life. But whereas I’ve always pictured patience as a sweet, smiling, long-haired lady in a white dress, I’m coming to see her as a frumpy, worn-out old broad with three chins. You know–sturdy–someone who’s been through the ringer and lived to tell about it. This is the kind of person I want to be (at least on the inside), someone who’s firmly committed to the roller coaster of life, someone who trusts every dip and turn.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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You can’t pick and choose what you receive from life, and you can’t always accurately label something as bad.

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A Light at the End of the Tunnel (Blog #334)

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This morning I saw my internist, who’s a saint as far as I’m concerned. First of all, she allayed my fears that anything was seriously wrong with me. She said that my chronic sinus infections and other such irritating problems were most likely due to a “glitch” in my immune system, that–like being gay–some people are just born this way. In order to confirm or deny her suspicions about my immune system, I gave up four vials of blood to be sent off for analyzation. Hopefully the results will pinpoint exactly what’s up.

To make up for the loss of blood, I ate three chocolate bars.

In other news, apparently my B12 levels, although technically “in range,” are low for someone my age. So my doctor’s nurse gave me a B12 shot, and this afternoon I bought liquid B12 to take sublingually. With any luck, this supplementation will positively affect my overall energy.

These were the “big items” for the day, but my doctor and I also discussed my (genetically) high cholesterol, for which she prescribed some dietary changes and a natural supplement (red yeast rice). She said, “Let’s try this for two or three months, then re-test. If it’s still high, THEN we’ll talk about statins.” For my sinus problems, she told me about a different saline-rinse product and actually endorsed using baby shampoo in my sinus rinses once or twice a week. (So not everything I’ve read on the internet and tried in the past is crap.) Lastly, she told me that the most likely reason I threw up in my mouth while sleeping a couple nights ago was because of the salsa on my nachos, not because of the actual nachos themselves. “Tomato products open up the esophageal sphincter,” she said, “so it’s best to limit your intake of them to before 4 PM.”

Who knew?

This afternoon I saw my therapist, and when we discussed my health challenges and what my doctor told me today, she said, “So it sounds like the problem is genetic, and that means IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. Everyone is dealt a different hand in life, and this is simply yours.”

Now how did she know I’ve been blaming myself for this?

I spent the rest of the day running errands and looking for the supplements my doctor mentioned. Really, despite the fact that I didn’t sleep much last night (most likely due to DAA or Doctor-Appointment Anticipation), it’s been a great day. My body has felt pretty good–really good, all things considered–and I’ve felt hopeful about getting my health issues sorted out soon-ish. Plus, I had coffee for the first time in two weeks (I gave it up when I got the flu), and that made me smile (and then made me jittery). But the bottom line is that between feeling a bit better and seeing both my doctor and my therapist in one day, I’ve been encouraged. At least for today, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Hopefully it’s not a train.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It’s okay to ask for help.

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