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.

Craving Sweets

I'm craving sweet things tonight. Chocolate, cookies.... Even the ads for sweet, non-vegan, overly processed things on the television look good! I had some more yams and broccoli with some slightly sweet, Thai-style peanut sauce (thin kind), which addressed the craving a little. I'm guessing I'm still feeling the major sugar-fest of Halloween and Diwali. So many yummy treats from Sweet Pea, so much sugar!

I am more aware now of the cravings, more mindful about them. Before I just indulged them when ever they came up. Really I know the cravings were more emotional based, just wanting satisfying things to eat because I was unsatisfied with my life. It isn't that I don't feel that kind of craving from time to time, I just am more aware of it, much more able to say to myself what my body needs as opposed to what my mind is clamoring for.

One thing that has changed about it is the ability to notice how the body does crave sugar, above and beyond the mind wanting to be satisfied with something sweet. Whenever there's a few days in a row where I have sweets I find myself feeling my body craving them.

Considering Each Choice

I'm feeling really tired out tonight. It has been a couple of big emotional talks, both with AM and CK, sandwiched around a very full day of yoga teacher training and my teaching Sunday. Also ended up getting my new mobile phone sorted out (about 90 minutes inside of Lloyd Center... ick). I feel pretty drained now, but not awful.

With AM and I it was really one too many "little things" the past week. Stuff just not being taken care of, feeling like my requests are set aside again and again. It all just came to a point where, in response to his enthusiastic input to an idea I'm working on for a yoga website, I found myself telling him that I felt as though he had many other priorities to attend to rather than get distracted by my project ideas. After we had talked a little more I finally said that more than anything my trust in our relationship had eroded over the past few years, to the point I was feeling rather hopeless.

Today I finally admitted to CK just how shaky I've been feeling about my relationship with AM. I also shared how I'd talked with AM on Friday, letting him know how tenuous I felt. How tight things are financially, which felt terrifying to share. How scared and upset, on top of all the icky shame stuff, I've been feeling.

I had been trying to tell her small bits, but afraid to share the whole with her. By the time the weekend rolled around I really had started to feel like both relationships were crumbling away. She talked more with me too and it was helpful to really learn from her what she was feeling rather than always trying to make it out via the underlying tension. We both agreed that although these truths are difficult, that we still need to reveal them together.

AM and I spoke further back at the house later. I commented that I still felt like he was my best friend, but that I also just felt like all my tricks for coping with being unhappy with how things have been are used up. He commented back that he felt like he had, worst of all, disrespected a friend in how he's treated me. He wants to show me that he can actually be the person he says he is.

I was trying to keep in the back of my mind something HB said this past week during a dharma talk. That our only way is to do the skillful, ethical thing in each situation as it arises. We cannot predict what we'll do next year, we can only approach each choice that is presented to us as it comes and in that moment make the choice that best embodies the precepts.

In this exact moment it feels right to continue talking to AM and giving him some time. He has noted that he knows he has to start showing me he really is intent on changing, doing what I need to feel more supported. I feel like it honors the relationship we have shared, the regard & love we have for one another. To honestly acknowledge what I need and provide space to see if those needs can be met. That's this moment.

I honestly don't know if there will be a change. I'd like there to be one. I'd like to believe my best friend can be who he says he is, especially in being a real partner to me. It would make my whole path more clear if changes did occur and it entirely fits with my real deep feeling for the precept that guides us to see the good in others. But I honestly cannot predict that changes will happen or not.

I feel profoundly grateful that CK reminds me of her love for me, that she doesn't plan to leave me. It kicks up the shameful feelings, the need to hear her say it leaves me feeling weak. This is scary, big stuff and sometimes I feel cut off from her by it. I can feel my body, my tense breath, but I cannot sense her sometimes.

Halloween 2008, Reflecting on Pain Noise

I spent much of the day dusting and organizing in the front rooms. It has been a while since I've done this chore and was helped by AM putting some boxes out in the garage. We've discovered a few boxes of things belonging to NB and need to get a hold of her to get her current address before we can send them on.

Not the usual way I'd like to spend a vacation day, however, it was nice to just have that time to take care of a task like that. I was happy to get things put into the shelves on either side of the fireplace. Moved the clustering, cluttering of glass bottles into the cabinets and other other shelves.

CK came over and also helped some with the cleaning, organizing. She and I carved a pumpkin by consensus (we did a peace sign and stars on it). Finished getting the filling for sushi rolls together. Every thing came together pretty smoothly.

At some point I was trying to get comfortable. CK asked how my pain was and I first said OK then realized that part of my pain was the pressure of my jeans. If the pressure of my jeans is too much on my legs and hips then my pain level is pretty high. I went and got pajama bottoms which felt immediately better. I had just been in such constant motion for so long I was moving past the pain.

One of the many problems with chronic pain. It is very easy for me to tune pain out. My brain is accustomed to the fact that it is given useless information all the time. There is always some level of pain that isn't anything new or worse, but I'm so used to tuning it out that when it really starts to hurt I don't pay any attention to it until it hurts to sit down, wear jeans...

Moving With the Current

I've felt my inner critic ratcheting up the guilt this week. As each day passed without me writing I felt the guilt-o-meter creep up a bit more. Edging toward that place where I just give up because I feel so guilty for slacking I can't bear the thought of facing the reality of starting over.

When interacting with people and I feel as though I was mindless or unskillful in my speech I can feel overwhelmed by the guilt of it, unable to be present for feeling bad. I'm trying to get better and actually say something to the person, as soon as I am possibly able. In the past I'd feel so ashamed of my behavior that I felt incapacitated to even address it with the person I'd hurt or made angry. Since I've been learning to say something to the person, as agonizingly painful as it feels, I often find that the person really hadn't taken offense at all or if they had, not to the extent I'd built it up to be in my mind.

So I am writing tonight, finally, after many full days. I gave a very well received presentation at work. I should be able to glean things out of that presentation into a generic one I'm going to propose to OS Bridge, a free, "pre" OSCON Open Source conference that some folks are trying to put together for next summer here in Portland (in response to OSCON moving from Portland in 2009). I'm also considering proposing a "Yoga for Geeks" workshop there as well.

Suddenly my prospects of teaching more yoga have grown! Tonight I met with the owner of SomaSpace, a studio that features formal & ecstatic dance, body movement, and she's looking for yoga teachers. The space is convienient and lovely, very comfortable feeling. PB was not merely interested in the ideas I had, but enthusiastic and supportive as well.

We talked about my starting out by offering workshops and perhaps some regular, once-a-month classes. I said I'd like to do workshops on yoga and trauma recovery as well as a regular class for members of the transgender community. I think she'd be equally interested if I offered workshops for hospice workers and other pallative caregivers. I was just stunned by all the names of people she wants to introduce me to, ideas she had about marketing, and even the suggestion that I throw a party/fundraiser for myself to fund buying props!

Then I went to zazen and spent two sitting periods, plus the walking period, trying desperately to NOT plan everything now! Even as I tried to settle myself into my breath, I had to admit I was having very good ideas! One I really like is working towards doing a Metta Yoga workshop out of all I learn from Loving-kindness retreat in April.

For the present, I have the training to finish in March. PB and I agreed to keep in touch during the winter and as it gets closer to April we'll look at some dates. I am feeling that this may be a good arugument for making it to one of her dance evenings once in a while. It is a good way to keep that rapport between us supported.

If we as practitioners think of ourselves as entering a stream, I have this feeling of being moved along by the current. Not swept up, rushing heedlessly off. Rather being supported, bouyed up and moved along in the right direction. The current providing swiftness to my Way.

Essential Sound

Felt tired and disjointed much of the day, distracted. Got quite a bit done at work despite this. Home, dinner, zazen... Tried using the seiza bench to kneel again and felt very uncomfortable the whole first sit. I feel a resistance to standing up, perhaps I should have since it stirred up enough pain to be uncomfortable on my zafu during the second sit.

I had mentioned to my friend MP about being dilute before, in 1999 when he first got to meet me, in response to his saying how "concentrated" I seemed. He laughed and said he'd meant how concentrated I seemed in terms of Prana. I wrote back thanks for the clarity and told him that I'd liked thinking about being dilute in a sense of the self that was the way I interacted with the world.

He wrote back to me to say, "...now you have me thinking about di-lute and mono-lute... whatever those might be. Or even tri-lute. Hmm.

"There is something about lutes as embodying the duality of material existence I simply had not strung together."

When I saw this it first of all made me smile, discussions with MP nearly always do this. I am thinking that perhaps we journey towards mono-lute. We settle down all the other tones until it is just one, essential sound of clarity like a perfect Om. One tone that moves throughout several expressions, encompassing all of them.

Recognizing Truth

I had a session with GM today.  Spent some time discussing the whole situation with DW.  I said what had finally settled in me was recalling how unsupported I felt at that time in my life, how quick my Mom was to get me out of the house and working even though I was clearly at a loss, depressed after breaking my ankle.  I remembered listening to a woman at the Dharma Center give her Way Seeking Mind talk to us, noting that when the memory came back to her that she'd been raped by her father she just shut down and spent six months just healing, crying, screaming, and coming to terms with it.  I recall feeling a little envious that her friends and mother and supported such a period of recovery for her and immediately felt a little guilty for it.

I'm not sure if it wrong or right to try and make up for something I wish I'd had.  After all, much of what I suffered from throughout my childhood was my mother trying to make up for what she'd always wanted.  I feel that my wish for DW to have space to recover without being pressured to hurry up and be an adult is more healthy than my mother's wish for me to have fancy dresses.  I'm equally unsure if this will work or will blow up in my face, in which case she's back to trying to find housing through the addiction counseling services she's using.

I talked to her about my discussion with HB around the shame that keeps bubbling up.  How to look at it, recognize it is part of my life but not mine.  It was left behind by adults who abused me, the shame they refused responsibility for so I picked it up instead, blamed myself.  She liked his instruction to check through the precepts validate that I'm fine, not doing anything to be ashamed of.

We talked around the topic of my Mom some before I finally admitted that finally using the word "abuse" around her behavior leaves me feeling even more estranged from her than I feel normally.  I feel myself flinch away from the word when I combine it in my head with my mother.  GW pointed me gently to the word and the hard truth of it.

More things I don't want to incorporate into the me I perceive myself to be.  The very things HB says I need to make part of me, treat with love.  I don't want to love this, I feel in equal parts the desire to throw things, yell and the desire to crawl into bed, hide.  I don't want to be pulled into and through this, it feels suffocating.  

GW says I will be able to, I'll learn the habit of recognizing the shame and fear as artifacts left behind by irresponsible adults.  Like litter across my psyche.  More time in discussion with HB about how to love this, how to sink into this without losing my breath.