If everything you think you know,
Makes your life unbearable,
Would you change?
Would you change?

I rented the first season of the HBO series Rome this weekend, and before the first DVD went to the main menu, a little promo clip for all of the HBO series played. It had images from various shows over a soundtrack of this hauntingly beautiful Tracy Chapman song:

The song brought me running right out of the kitchen, where I'd gone to do something while I waited for the disc to start up. It still mystifies me what kind of message, if any, the creators of the promo thought the song had to say about HBO programming, but it did remind me of how incredibly lovely and rich Tracy Chapman's voice is. I liked her very much in the late 1980s, but haven't listened to her in a long time.

But beyond that, the song affected me because it pretty much struck right at the core of something I've been thinking about a lot this a week and to some extent discussing with others.

You know, one of the frustrating things about going to therapy and getting healthy is that you change and become more functional--and the world and people around you do not. So here you are, full of better thoughts and healthier behaviors, expressing yourself better, setting boundaries, whatever it is that's appropriate. And you're surrounded by all you've gathered about you in your life, all of which is full of dysfunction.

And there it is. And there's nothing you can do about that except continue to act healthy, and not succumb to others' dysfunctional models, and hope they maybe get it at some point. That's it. And that can be SO frustrating. You see people struggling, you see how dark it is for them, and you remember being there. And you know what they don't, and you want to say to them: "This isn't as hard as you think it is right now...there's a way out, you just have to want to do it...and it's faster and easier than you think...it hurts less than you think it will...it hurts so much more where you are than taking that step out..."

I'm not saying I'm perfect here. That I'm the supreme example of light and healing. But I can see things now I couldn't, and some things are glaringly obvious. You see them saying and doing things you used to say and do. You see the traps. You see people you LOVE standing in traps. Traps they've walked into, or built around themselves, and the door isn't even LOCKED, and they WON'T LEAVE. And you're standing outside, saying, come out, come out, see, it's possible, and they...just look at you sadly and sit there. Some even get angry at you that you won't sit in your own little crate anymore and lash out at you from between the bars if you come too close or if you try to open the latch to the door.

It's hard. It seems I'm surrounded of late by people who are trapped and hurting and all they keep saying is "I can't...I can't just...I don't know how...If I do that, everyone will/no one will..." Or people who are so hurt that they are angry at me for being myself. Angry at me for refusing to act in ways that used to hurt me--AND them.

I know I was this "I can't" person myself. Sometimes I forget and still am. But not so much anymore. And If I find I need to to make an "I can't" statement these days, I always finish it with "...yet." Because then it's not an "I can't" statement anymore.

But from my own experience, having been there, I know that there's nothing I can say or do to help them. They have to be ready. I could scream it, I could wave it in front of them, but they won't be able to hear or see it...until they do. It's like Charles Allan Gilbert's All Is Vanity. You swear it's a photo of a woman at her dressing table...until it's not. And it's up to you whether you'll let yourself see it.

I couldn't change until I was ready to change. So I know they won't hear me until they are ready to change, themselves.

But what will it take? That's what is so hard. Sometimes it even gets you angry. You want to shake them, slap them out of their stupor.

In most cases I know it takes hitting a rock bottom moment, where there are only two alternatives, and one of them--the inertia one--is just too terrifying to contemplate. And then they know something must be done. And so I stand quietly and I try to just do what I have to do and let them sit still in their pain if they need to. I try to be gentle about it, like Chapman's voice in the song. But it's hard, and even in the midst of my trying to be the gentle observer, I can't help but join Chapman in wondering over and over:

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?

These questions I want answers to, for the people I love, and the people I care about, and the people I know are hurting.

How low does your awful need to be to realize you're at rock bottom? Your depth capacity here is terrifying me. How many examples of goodness do you need to see before it sinks in that there's an alternative out there that is nothing like the unlocked cage you're sitting in? How long before you realize hurting yourself is not helping you or anyone around you? That it's not ME who is hurting you, it's you who are hurting?

The best I can do is keep singing Chapman's song to myself and hope that maybe it'll be someday soon.

Of late, I've had an opportunity to meet with some other women who have also had sexual assault experiences. I have found doing this to be helpful, because survivors of rape often share some similar struggles that others don't really understand. You often feel so alone after experiencing an assault, and you don't realize there are others out there going through and feeling the same things you do. Discovering others have similar struggles, fears, and challenges and hearing how they are dealing with them can be very soothing and sometimes instructive.

So overall this has been a great help to me. But of late, every time one of these meetings happens, after I've shared some innocuous, entirely impersonal thought or perspective, someone starts verbally attacking me in this very aggressive, personal, and angry way. I've only just started to learn how to feel safe asserting my own feelings and not being crushed by others' judgmental statements about them. And I've also only just started to learn how to feel safe and stay calm while confronting anger directed straight at me. (Both these things are difficult for many rape survivors to do). I am getting better at it, but it's still a very scary thing for me to experience and manage.

When it's happened in the above context, I have been able--for possibly the first time in my life--to calmly separate myself from the other person's rage and realize it wasn't about me at all, and then diffuse the situation by just being true to myself and my feelings while at the same down not allowing myself to be intimidated or silenced. And I've been pretty proud of that; it's not something I was ever taught to do naturally. But even so, the regular need to have to do it of late, and particularly with people I expected constant supportive sisterhood from, has left me feeling pretty shaky and somewhat scared to go back in case it keeps happening again.

Then, a few days ago, I was talking one-on-one to a woman who had witnessed what had happened. I commented that people seemed to be getting especially rough on me lately, and she agreed. I said didn't know why that was happening--what was I doing? She thought for a minute and then said she didn't think I was doing or saying anything, technically, that should cause such reactions. She said, "I think you stick up for yourself more--you aren't afraid to express how you're feeling, even if it's not something everyone wants to hear. You seem to believe in yourself more--you seem...self-confident. I think maybe a lot of other people are still really far away from feeling that and maybe that makes them angry, because maybe they're jealous. I think maybe they want to be where you are, because you seem...healthier...and they're mad that you're there and they're not and maybe they want to make you feel like them, because they can't feel like you."

My first reaction was to want to laugh at her saying that I'm being perceived by other survivors as someone who can stick up for myself and believe in myself, and who is markedly self-confident by comparison. I feel I am slowly developing these skills, but I still feel like a tiny gosling who's just pecked my way out of the egg and my feathers are still wet. Each effort to be this way is still exhausting to me. It takes so much work to not fall back on bad, self-critical habits or just cave to other people's feelings or needs or anger. But looked at carefully, as hard as it may be, I realized (with shock) the woman actually wasn't wrong--at least about the first half. However much further I still have to go, compared to where I've come from, and compared to many others of similar experience to me, I am more self-confident, and I am asserting my needs and feelings out into the world.

And realizing this led me to another shocking realization: Unlike what the woman above was supposing, it wasn't that these women are angry or jealous that I'm self-confident. Not really. The anger and aggression being directed at me isn't about ME at all.

It's that they are using me as a guinea pig to see if it's safe for THEM to be self-confident.

I know this because I used to be them. When you've been raped, unless you've been well supported from the start, the most tender and vulnerable parts of your personality tend to burrow deep down into some very dark, presumably safe place (though it's not, really) deep inside of you. And that vulnerable self peeks up from time to time, and says hoarsely in a voice raw from lack of use, "Is it safe to come out?" Usually the test fails and the vulnerable self burrows back down and puts the lid over it's little dugout hiding place.

The way this "is it safe" behavior displays itself is not immediately obvious, though. You see, when you're a rape survivor, you begin to tell yourself, based on people's responses to you and your assault, "I can't do that. I can't say that. I can't feel that. Because if I do, I'll get hurt. Again. And I can't bear more hurt." You think about what people will do or say that might potentially hurt you. You gage people's responses, trying to read into them if the shame and disgust you expect is possibly there. You usually believe it is or will be. So you keep quiet, and you keep up that "I can't" mantra.

And then, suddenly you see someone--particularly someone who might have had an experience like yours--doing something, feeling something, saying something that you've been afraid to do or feel or say. And you are so afraid for YOURSELF, that you respond with the fear of a cornered animal. You lash out. You do the behavior or you say the thing that you are afraid others will do or say to you if you were to do what that stronger person did.

You act disgusted or judgmental or weirded out or angry and dismissive. You ask the person (sometimes verbally, sometimes just mentally) the horrible, destructive, blaming questions you're afraid others might ask you, or that you may even ask yourself. You tell the person to shut up, to keep it to themselves, just like your assaulter told you (either verbally or by implication). Or you try to FORCE her to shut up and not say anything, with angry, hurtful, aggressive behavior, just like your assaulter did to you.

You do this quite unconsciously, but you do it. You don't think when you're afraid, you just react. It isn't really about the person displaying the behavior. It's about the behavior itself and how afraid you are to do it, even as you want to do it very badly.

I know this because in the 20 years in which I was in denial about my assault, I did all of that, sad as I am to admit it. And I even still did it sometimes in the first few months of learning to confront it head on. But from having been that person, I also know this: it's not that the person wants to attack you or hurt you. It's that person's vulnerable self testing to see if it's safe to come out. It's that the person needs to know, to see, that someone can manage to stay steady--can manage to NOT be hurt--even when the imagined worst is thrown at her. When you feel so alone, you sometimes simply can't imagine the life and strength and confidence you wish for deep down in your little dark place is possible. You need to see someone else can do it. And then it takes lots of time to accept and process what you saw. And sometimes it doesn't ever get all the way through. But sometimes, it does allow someone else to see that yes, it IS safe to come outside.

And so, despite it arriving through a challenging experience, this is a momentus thing for me. And entirely astonishing to recognize. I've been working so hard, plowing forward with my line of sight doggedly set on some far horizon, I didn't even realize something amazing had happened right in front of me.

I am no longer that buried, vulnerable half-person, peeking out from the hole asking if it's safe, testing others on the outside who seem stronger. I am the person on the outside, getting tested.

Wet gosling or not, I am out of the egg.

I did it. I did it.

Words can not describe the sense of accomplishment and pride I feel.

The comedian Steven Wright once had this joke that went something like, "While I was gone, somebody rearranged on the furniture in my bedroom. They put it in exactly the same place it was." That's a bit like how I've always felt about figuring out how my sexual assault has affected my response to relationships. Something didn't feel right there, but I couldn't exactly pin down what it was. That's been frustrating because you can't work on something until you know what's there to work on.

I've been had difficulty trying to figure this out because I haven't been able to find a response similar to mine detailed in any literature on the subject. Most of the discussion about intimacy issues due to sexual assault seems to revolve almost entirely around sexual relations. It's oft repeated that post-assault, it's fairly common for survivors to either become 1) very fearful of or disinterested in sex or 2) extremely promiscuous. But neither of those two things ever happened to me. For me, sex was never a problem. I enjoy sex very much, and while I'm not what I'd call inhibited in bed, I've also never had the urge to act out sexually in some extreme, unhealthy way.

So sex was not what felt off for me. And yet something has always felt off. Trying to navigate an intimate relationship often leaves me feeling very unsteady and unmoored. And the books and articles I've read don't talk too much about anything else beyond sexual intimacy that's ever given me a eureka, "That's it!" moment.

Yesterday, though, I think I finally experienced a breakthrough. I believe I was finally able to create a synapse that allows me to articulate the situation to myself in a way that will let me look at it and figure out how to accept and integrate this into my relationships in a conscious way, hopefully resulting in a more positive experience for both myself and my partners.

So, two things that I experience that I think are probably not "normal" for other women when it comes to relationships:

1) Whenever someone approaches me and attempts to get to know me or communicate even somewhat intimately with me (tries to be "personal"), I always immediately switch into a light "feelers out" mode to assess what their "agenda" is. That is, I assume that everyone who approaches me has an agenda, and I have to decide if it's harmful or not. This behavior is consistent across the board with every new interaction I have, but for everyday interactions, it's fast and low key. It's more in the background and not high pressure--I don't feel particularly panicked or unsafe. However, when it is a man (or woman, for that matter) approaching me with overt physical, romantic, or sexual interest, the warning bells go off much louder and this "feelers out" behavior kicks into overdrive. I don't define it as this feeling when I'm doing it, but looked at objectively, I see I do feel "nervous"--in as much as it's as if my nerves and sensors are highly, busily active, disallowing me any level of comfort. When this kicks in, I will do multiple subtle "tests" (or what I see as tests) to assess if the person is "real" and genuinely innocent in his interest, or if he is trying to "play" me. Every word, look, action, and reaction becomes highly magnified and viewed individually of each other.

I'd figured out this one before today, but it's connected to item number two below, which was the missing piece. The part that's interesting is that although I've always known on some level I do this (though perhaps not so consciously), what I didn't know until recently is that most women do NOT do this. I assumed this was natural behavior that everyone partook in--a basic instinctual behavior every animal uses to protect itself from predators. In fact, I thought anyone who didn't engage in such behavior was, well...stupid. And setting themselves up for harm.

2) This was my wake-up realization yesterday, that I'd never been able to see before. I'm sure for most women, as they get to know their lovers or significant others better, they become increasingly more secure in their regard for them. This is not the case for me. Once step #1 above is over, and I've supposedly established for myself who I feel is the genuine person and have begun to develop a relationship with that person, the fear that motivates #1 above doesn't lessen, as logically it should. That "I'm safe with my alpha dog/pack mate/what have you" instinct never kicks in. Instead, something weird happens: the more I grow to trust a man in an intimate relationship, the the more my insecurity in that relationship, my need to test, and my need for reassurance that I am safe with him and that he won't suddenly turn on me and hurt me persists and even grows larger and more frightening.

In short, my fear continues and/or increases as things get better. The more trustworthy the person becomes, or the more staid and predictable the relationship gets, the more afraid I become the person is secretly masking a lack of regard or boredom with me, and that he therefore is or will eventually secretly be doing activities that will devalue or hurt me.

And I think this must be directly related to my assault in large part. Given my first association with aggressive sexual interest was in a context where the person should NOT have been sexually interested in me at all ("responsible" doctor with secret agenda), it's clear why #1 is in effect. And similarly, given that my assaulter was in a highly trustworthy role and exploited that role to confuse me and get one over on me, it's no wonder that #2, is in effect--the more "reliable/responsible/trustworthy/normal" something appears, the more I need reassurance from that person that it's going to STAY that way and not turn into something ugly because I'm not paying enough attention and have allowed the appearance of safety to lull me into being hoodwinked.

This fear results in me feeling as if I need to be continually hypervigilant against the signs of danger, and I can never get relaxed and comfortable with a loving relationship. It leads me to interpret comfortable, long-term relationship behavior displayed by my partner as disregard and disinterest in me that will ultimately lead to devaluation and/or abuse. I can NOT "relax and just groove on it," as one boyfriend once begged me to do. I can NOT "take it for granted" that someone still loves me. I can not "take it for granted" that that person will continue to do so, even if he did so yesterday, or even the hour before. I seem as of yet to be almost entirely without that mechanism that allows one to start relaxing into the relationship, and riding a wave of feeling calm, positive, happy, and...well, safe. I never feel safe. I *need* to be reminded regularly of the things other, normal people can simply take for granted or I become, on some hidden level, terrified. Terrified the monster is going to come out just when I thought everything was okay, proving once again that I'm a fool prone to being used, my judgement is impaired, and I can't "pick" a trustworthy man. (Or perhaps that no men are trustworthy? Probably both.)

And that driving need for reassurance results in still other behaviors I don't even enjoy the feeling of, but compulsively do anyway, such as:

• Directing overwhelmingly high levels of loving affection and attention at the other person
• Becoming a slave to feeding my constant and never ending hunger to be re-reminded that I am in fact loved and treasured as special to him, leading me to act out either directly or passive-agressively in any number of ways (more "testing") to test to see if I am still safe, if he is still thinks I am valuable, or if instead he will turn on me and become something other than what he is purporting to be

Again in short: stifling and needy--which, ironically, are two major characteristics I found most oppressive and ever-present in my own upbringing, and that I find most odious in other people now. They say you hate most in others what you hate most in yourself, and I guess it's true.

Anyway, this was a revelation to me. It's interesting how you can live with yourself and your behaviors for your entire life and not be able to gain perspective on them until some small thing happens and then suddenly...bang, there it is.

I'm not sure how I will work with this knowledge now that I have it. But somehow I feel just being conscious of it will help me have better relationships.

I mean, I know how difficult my lack of consciousness on this has been for me. I *knew* I was behaving compulsively, and I didn't even LIKE it when I was doing it, but I couldn't contain it and I didn't know why. And with no perspective on it, I couldn't explain it to myself or my partners. I wasn't able to take a step back and see what was really in effect. And I can also see how difficult my unconscious behaviors must have been for my partners to deal with, too. It's not comfortable to feel over-loved in a way that insinuates expectation of equal return (even if I didn't consciously recognize I was doing that). And how insulting and infuriating it must feel when you know how much you love someone and she can never really process that. I'd imagine it would seem like I was always calling them a liar. And my desperate fear and need for reassurance might come across as either clingy or pushy, depending, rather than what it really is. And if I wasn't able to articulate for them what it really was, how would they, who don't have my issues, have any idea what's going on?

I'd like to become less insecure and more confident in others' regard of me. I don't want to be so needy of affection that I push others away. And I'd like my lovers to have the comfort and loving relationship with me they deserve--one that doesn't feel for them as if, through my own disbelief in their regard, *I* am making it impossible for them to be able to love me the way I'm asking to be loved (what a terrible trap I've been setting for them and for me!). And one that doesn't in any way make me or them feel I think they're a liar or a potential asshole under an assumed personality.

So I think on both sides me being conscious of this and being able to explain it will help. It will help me step back and examine why I'm behaving certain ways and what the core root of that is. And this will probably help me both contain it somewhat and help me stay centered rather than panicked. And that state of mind would help me explain what's going on to my partner, which would give him a key to what I need to feel safe. I think if my partner were conscious of where my fear lies, he'd have a much easier time understanding and providing the spontaneous reassurance that I need. This might allow us both to head it off at the pass before it goes into overdrive compulsion and becomes something negative for both of us. It would allow us to find a baseline where I get just enough so that I *would* start to become comfortable and safe, but not so much that it becomes a burden. And a shared consciousness of this would also help my partner step back and observe my behavior as something other than what he might have assumed it was motivated by. Rather than assume it's about him and some imagined shortcoming I'm accusing him of, he'll know it's about me, and what about me it is. So he'd be able to ask me good questions when my behavior appeared to be tending toward the compulsive in the above ways, and that would in turn give me the reality check I need to take a breather, stop merely reacting out of fear, and really think about what is going on and what I'm really feeling in that moment.

These are all just thoughts, yet to be tested. But I'm glad I've had the realization. I think it's important. It feels like a missing link I've now recovered. I think it will help.

Update: I woke up this morning and already feel better, and I don't feel like relating to this post at all. I just want to push it out of my mind and pretend I never wrote it. Pathos embarrasses me--and even moreso now. I'm feeling angry and embarrassed I indulged in it. I have half a mind to erase the whole thing and pretend it never happened, but I won't because it's real--the path where I'm going isn't always perfectly paved, and I can't hold that against myself or pretend I'm perfect and that I never have moments of weakness--that's what I *used* to do, and that never worked. And it's important for me to realize I have some more work to do, and this will be a reminder. So I'm leaving the post up, but it's already mostly irrelevant.
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A few days ago I was going to write a post about the fact that I'd suddenly realized I was beginning to forget what it felt like to be me before I started getting better. I'd planned to describe how surprised I was that the memory of it all seemed to have faded, and how shocking it was to contemplate that I might only be feeling positive from now on. How odd that felt, and how strange to start losing something familiar I'd felt for years--to not remember how it felt to be that girl anymore. It seemed somewhat scary, although also probably positive. But I was thinking I ought to record some of the old feelings before they faded entirely and I could no longer write about them with any clarity or realism, which I want to be able to do, for myself and for others.

It's funny, though, how tiny triggers can bring back feelings that you thought weren't there anymore.

It seems those feelings I thought were entirely gone aren't completely eradicated yet, but were instead just sleeping in a distant corner of my mind, coiled up like a dark cobra inside a basket, just waiting for the right tune to lure it back out and strike, sending its poison into my blood stream.

So. I realize I haven't forgotten what it felt like. Not yet. Not totally.

And sensing the first edge of those feelings again brought me back, as it often has in the past, to this song and scene from the film Magnolia. The scene and those feelings are so inextricably bound for me, that experiencing either one will often bring a craving for the other, regardless of which is experienced first.

It has an emotional resonance I can't shake. When I watch this, I remember being the me I thought I was forgetting. I feel everything I did then.

I don't want to go back to the place this scene speaks to me of. But that's where I'm at today, sitting back with that girl in a darkened movie theater, seeing through her eyes, stunned by the grip recognition--this is me. Wanting to watch it over and over, a confirmation of that darkness. And since that's where I am today, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. And I'm not going to disallow myself my desire to watch this scene a few times and feel the dark and frightening and yet somehow still seductive grip of what I used to feel.

But I won't cater to it for too long. I'm not gonna let that win. This isn't me. Not anymore.

I'm not going to take it as a failure that I can still feel something I hoped I'd conquered.

Do you remember adolescence?

That stage when you suddenly realized the childhood things that once brought you pleasure now just didn't seem to "fit" you right anymore. Suddenly you weren't able to comfortably settle into them like you used to--they hadn't changed, but somehow the lens through which you viewed them left them somewhat duller--they seemed too simple, too one-dimensional, too...well, immature. You began to feel a desire for more complex, adult challenges, relationships, situations. Your body yearned and ached, sometimes literally, for these new things. But...and this is what makes it adolescence...your body and mind weren't adult yet. Because the yearning sets in before the new things can be realized and experienced.

Do you remember what that felt like, how awkward, how frustrating, how sometimes frightening? You knew what you didn't want anymore, you had some physical/emotional sense of wanting something other, but you were still a bit afraid to plunge directly into fully adult experiences and behaviors to get that thing. And in fact, even if you had been ready, you just didn't know where or how to get those things, or even what they actually would look or feel like, so that you could recognize, capture, and be them.

And as if that inner turmoil were not confusing enough, the external world decides to turn you into its own personal Pushmi-pullyu. You want to be adult, but you're unsure of how to--and instead of helping you make that journey, the real adults in your life start sending you mixed messages--wavering between continuing/desperately desiring to still treat and protect you like a child one moment, while demanding you "grow up and act your age" and pushing you into complex social situations the next.

It is a challenging time and the adolescent wavers on the brink, a sometimes falling back into the safety of familiar childhood comforts and behaviors, then rushing forward headlong to test some new adult behavior only to realize they haven't really gotten it down yet, and it's going to take a lot of fucking up and false starts to get into this new state of being.

It's a time few people remember with fondness. You often hear people say if there's one time they'd never go back to, it's their adolescence. You can almost see them literally shudder when they say it; you can see them remembering how they felt--the bad hair, skin, clothing, the awkwardly, half-evolved (or too quickly evolved) bodies, the social faux pas, the feeling of desire whilst fearing one is undesirable, the feeling of being nowhere good, and wondering how the hell long this was going to last.

I bring this up because I suddenly find myself in some similar kind of state to this, but this time emotionally, not physically, as it is when one is a teen. (Although, ironically, my body is evolving quite rapidly during this time into something else, as well.)

I've been working hard to sort through the muck of issues surrounding my rape as well as many, many other related and unrelated unhealthy patterns I'd absorbed over my life. I wanted--I want--so desperately to feel better, to get better. And it's been working. I've managed to see my evolution happening right before my eyes. It hasn't been easy, but to see the evolution has been rewarding. I am starting to feel better, and more healthy. Where I saw hopelessness before, I can often see hope now. I don't have as many negative impulses. I don't fall into depression very often. I don't think the world is a sad and fucked up place anymore. I feel on the whole so much better.

But it also leaves me in an awkward emotional phase. I know what unhealthy looks like now. I have many more tools with which to recognize it and cut it off at the pass. And I have some general idea of what healthy looks like. But for so many years, I've never lived there--I've never experienced it, I've never surrounded myself with people who were in that place.

In fact, I did just the opposite.

I once said to a friend something like, "I know my people, and I always let them know subtly that I know them." I did. I knew my people. My heart meshed with their hearts. I sought them out.

This reminds me of the film Hedwig and The Angry Inch. I remember hearing these lines from the song "The Origin of Love" years back, during some of my darkest hours, and thinking, yes, this is just right, this is just how it is:

But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We call it love.

That was what I looked for and recognized. That is what bonded me to people. I could see that the pain down in their soul was the same as the one down in mine. And I loved them, and I showed them, and then they loved me. We brilliant, gorgeous, sad, troubled, angry, misanthropic, hurt, damaged souls--we "got" each other. We held each other. We told each other it was okay.

It felt good to be understood, to be held, even if it was in a place we all felt pain staying in. We didn't LEAVE that place, we just comforted each other IN it.

But now, something has shifted in me. I've done it myself--I've purged some of my pain and the habits that come with it. And now, because of that, I find I can't be in that place anymore. I can't receive the same comfort, even when I do it all the exact same way I did it before. Like trying to put on my favorite old children's clothes on my budding adolescent body, things are tight, uncomfortable, awkward. They no longer FIT.

I still recognize those people who were my people; they're the only ones I have ever understood; the only ones I've been able to communicate with. I want the comfort of them still, of not being alone, of if nothing else is to be shared, sharing our pain, of showing them I get it, because I do still get it. But the thing is, I don't FEEL it anymore. Now, I can only sympathize, not empathize. I feel distanced from it in a way I never did before.

I'm told this is a sign of getting healthy. But now here I am, standing awkwardly in some kind of emotional adolescence, midway through my life. I don't fit with my old people anymore. They feel the impact of this emotional distance, and I feel it, too. I see us getting more and more cut off from each other every day, even as I hold my hands out to them, even as I feel the pull of every new person like that I meet. Old habits die hard.

But I while I no longer fit right in my old world anymore, I also don't fit with whomever my new people will be yet. I don't even know who my new people ARE. I have a vague sense of what they are NOT. I have a vague sense of what I would like them to be. But how to find these people? I've never encountered these creatures...I was too busy with that other life, that other perspective. I don't know how to act in this rare company, how to grow into this new healthy "emotional adulthood," as it were. I feel awkward, in some kind of no-woman's-land.

Like an adolescent, I feel unready and afraid of this new state of being. I feel strange in my skin. I feel I couldn't possibly be accepted into this world of mysterious adulthood, because I don't know how to act in it. I feel I will be called out for a fraud, ridiculed, made ridiculous in my grand entrance into the party with my first attempt at grown-up-girl makeup and clothing.

And I feel a deep sense of loss and pain at having to leave behind those I have always loved most. It feels almost like a death; very much like grieving. Like leaving your family to move to another country across a vast ocean and knowing you will never, ever return again--that their precious faces, which held so much comfort for you in the past, will fade and disappear, never to be touched by you again. The pain of this; the mournfulness and nostalgia...it is almost unbearable.

And I feel guilt at leaving them in their pain, as well. They already hurt so much; how can I hurt them more with my leaving?

And I am afraid to leave my old people. If I leave them...they will be hurt, and they will not take me back. And what if I fail? Who will be left for me? What will be left for me?

Who is going to be there to hold me while I pass through this valley from one state of being to the other?

I must let go those behind me, whose embraces now no longer feel like comfort, but only holding back. And in the world in front of me, well, those there are fully realized and don't even see me yet; they don't even know I need a hand up.

And perhaps to enter their world, one must not need to have a hand up.

Which means for now, like every adolescent, I must walk there all by myself; I must learn myself, through observation, trial, and error. It feels like perhaps I will only be embraced once I finish the journey and arrive at the house on the hill. And then the embrace might just be my own, and that will be enough. But right now, I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about anything. I can't see my future; I can't see what I will become, I can't see how long I will be alone, between these two places, and I am afraid.

I feel very alone. More alone than I've felt in a very long time.

Growing pains are a necessary part of adolescence. But they hurt like hell.

---
This entry has been extremely hard for me to write for some reason...it took me stopping and starting for days to finish it. Now that I've written the final line, I don't want to go back and reread because I'm afraid I'll delete it. I'm hitting publish without editing, so please forgive any errors or confusing parts.

I was going to use this photo to add context to a somewhat serious post I've been struggling to write for a week now. But you know what? I find it's Friday, and the sun is out, and I realize I just don't feel like being serious.

So I'll just put it out there in the spirit of playfulness and attitude with which it was taken.

Which is as it should be. Because all the joy in the world is all about play, ain't it, people?

You know, I just heard an old song on the radio that matched the photo's sentiment exactly. It lifted my heart right up, the singer's rough and ragged voice bragging to the world that hell, it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.

Too fucking right. I'm not ashamed to be glad. Don't you be, either.

Gladness. You can feel it. Take in as much as you fucking can, till you think you can't take in any more. And then take in more. Because you can.

Yes. I do believe in the hope, and that it may raise each and every one of us above the badlands.

Happy weekend, my darlings. And a big, lusty tongue kiss to each and every one of you.

---

And because I love encores, and because it's about to be the weekend, and because I wish you were here to play with me, and because you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl:

Happy weekend song #2

Well let there be sunlight, let there be rain
Let the brokenhearted love again
We can run with our arms open wide before the tide

Happy weekend song #3:

Baby, out in the street I don't feel sad or blue
Baby, out in the street I'll be waiting for you

Meet me out in the street
Meet me out in the street

Don't lose sight of yourself
Don't let anyone change you back

You are the only light there is
For yourself my friend

I've often used this blog to help me work through some of the more difficult issues I've been struggling with, and as a result I sometimes forget it can also be used to report happy things and positive progress. Since I'm delighted (and often wide-eyed and amazed) to report that positivity seems to be ruling my day most of the time now, I'm going to try to start sharing some of those things more. I think it's important, not only for me to get used to acknowledging that it's okay--and safe--to be publicly happy that I'm happy, but also to demonstrate to those who may have been following my blog who have their own struggles (and who doesn't?), or who come upon it later, to find some kind of narrative of change. Or, more concisely: I want people who come here to be able to see not only what was my dark tunnel, but that there IS actually light at the end of said tunnel, and what that light is like (for me personally, at least).

Because people, it's so really, really good. It's like getting to step into a shower where sunlight pours out of the tap, and just drenches you, warm and bright, running all over your body. And you get to turn around and face the tap and let it cascade down, all over your smiling face. And the tap never runs dry. Never.

I want to say: I'm starting to feel this.

I want to say: This kind of thing is actually possible.

I want to say: You can have this.

So, the topic for the week: pleasure.

This is post #1 in a series about the concept and reality of happiness--and how both are changing for me. I found I had more to say than I expected, so I'm breaking it up. The main question for this post is: Do you--or have you ever--seen some of yourself in any parts of this, too? What thoughts does it jog in your mind about happiness and what makes us happy at different times in life? Ever been happy in unhappiness?

There's a very famous opening line from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that goes, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

The line is quoted a lot, to the point that I'd say it's assumed aphoristic status. People continue to quote it because they feel it reflects a basic life truth.

I was one of these people for a very long time. Even before I'd technically read it, I'd fallen for this line, sinker and hook, the way one does for a bad, yet irresistible, lover. I met it, swallowed it, believed its story implicitly, and adjusted my life to accommodate it.

Now I think it's bunk. Now I think I sold myself a bill of (very discounted, defective) goods.

Tolstoy's line is the precursor to a lengthy story about a number of extremely unhappy and dysfunctional families. It's basically a sales pitch for the book--and, one might project, for much of Tolstoy's writing and world view. "I can't write about happy families, because their stories are always the same. Happy families are boring. But misery--misery is interesting. There are a million ways to be miserable, each an intriguing story of its own. Whereas, there is only one way to be happy, and it's not worth talking about."

How dismissive that is. And, I'm learning, how entirely untrue.

But it has taken a long, long while for me to realize that.

For years, I did believe that the only interesting stories were stories of struggle. Of depression and doomed efforts and addiction and dysfunction and darkness. Of confirmation of the world's general fucked state, the mainstream populace's drone-like acceptance of and complicity in maintaining said state, and of the small efforts of isolated freaks to fight back against the oppressive norm, doomed as those efforts might ultimately be.

I believed this not only of fictional stories, but of real life stories. Normal, happy people were dull. They hadn't LIVED. They had no stories.

And I wanted stories.

I began to surround myself with others who believed this, too, and who wanted stories. People who were devastatingly interesting in their unique unhappinesses. Who held up their dysfunctions like flags of victory. Who loved and were proud of their pain, and who loved others for their pain. And who, though they'd not admit it, were always comparing each other's pain and deriving a sense of superiority from it, both as a group, against the outside, and individually, against each other.

Who hurts the most? Whose pain is most exquisite? Who is the most beautifully fucked up? Whose drama is the most evident? ¿Quien es mas forastero? (Who's the most "outsider"?)

These were "my people." Our glory and validation came from being unglorious. From being unhappy, and beaten down, and isolated, and freakish ("By whose standard?" the voice in my head wants to ask now). We took great joy in things like that first Radiohead single. You know, the one where the singer screams about wanting to be with a special, beautiful person, but no, he can't because (cue the anthemic swell of power chords) he's a creep, he's a weirdo...he doesn't belong here. It was our anthem, sung back to us. We loved it. We believed it. And more than that, we WANTED it. We wanted the weirdo, outsider status. We wanted the power chords when we walked in the room.

We chose to live in that song's push-pull, yearn-repel dichotomy. Because that, we felt, was interesting.

Oh sure, we, like the singer, told ourselves and others that we wished we could happily "float like a feather in a beautiful world." We wanted a perfect body. We wanted a perfect soul. But then again, we didn't. We didn't dare. Because happy, perfect people were all alike. Happy, perfect people didn't write songs like "Creep." Happy, perfect people didn't write great novels like Anna Karenina. Happy, perfect people didn't pen poems like Bukowski. Happy, perfect people didn't make art, didn't change the world, didn't inspire anything. Happy people were just...happy. Nonentities. And that...that ain't "so fucking special" after all, is it?

No, it was our want of the happy and perfect, and the ultimate disappointment of not having it, of knowing we would never measure up, that kept us interesting. If we actually got to happy, we disappeared.

I can never be happy because I won't be SPECIAL if I'm happy.

Everywhere you turn in that sentence, a trap door, leading you right back into the cell you just left.

As I said, I walked into the trap and stayed there for a long time.

I didn't want to be dismissed, devalued, and disappeared; to have my story waved off as "alike" and not worth notice. I didn't want to be lumped in with the great mass of bourgeois, boring, average humanity. I wanted to be special, and different, and interesting.

I became ashamed to be normal. And I became afraid to be happy. Because happiness meant extinction. And expulsion from my chosen "family" of outsiders. You got happy, you ceased to matter.

So I clung to the most miserable, dysfunctional parts of me. I held them close, always nursing them first, so they became strong enough to push and hold any more hopeful aspects of myself away from the bottle till they became puny and weak. I let these unhappy parts grow out of all balance and control, until they had become so powerful, they could quickly and brutally devour any small happinesses I managed to produce, like Saturn devouring his children. I let it take me over, until I was seemingly incapable of even allowing myself to announce to myself or others any level of happiness, pride, or self-satisfaction without tagging on some kind of devaluing statement at the end to allow people--and myself--to discount it and demolish it. And I became very careful to never let the feeling grow too strongly. If I felt it rising up, I pushed it down so it could be controlled--so that I wouldn't "curse" myself by feeling good. Because I did believe that if I openly had positive expectations, or if I openly proclaimed happiness, I would be set upon by twofold the karmic misery to slap me down, punish me for my hubris, and keep me in my place.

Natural happiness in myself and others was considered unnatural and suspect; by both myself and my friends. We developed the angry "just you wait" attitude about anyone who seemed to self-satisfied, including ourselves. And the only "legitimate" way to feel "acceptably" happy became through temporary, artificial means. Drugs, alcohol, food, sex, live music...anything that created a fast, temporary happiness spike that was absolutely guaranteed to shortly afterward bring on a crash and transform itself into some kind of negative, self-sabotaging consequence that ensured we wouldn't stay happy for too long.

And, because that simply wasn't enough to guarantee my safe haven from happiness, I also befriended and made lovers of others who were doing the same thing I was--because, you see, then their miseries and unhappinesses and dysfunctions would impact me, and provide me with MORE pain and unhappiness and drama to nourish the beast, their intersections with and insinuations into my life making my own exponentially more fucked up and "interesting."

How incredibly crazy it looks to me now, from the outside--this nourishing of pain we gave to each other, which at the time looked so much like the tenderest love.

And you know, as strange as it sounds, at the time I did think I was happy. I felt I was living an interesting and authentic--if sometimes painful--life. But the authentically painful life was cool, because after all, as the movie once said, "Life IS pain...anyone who says differently is selling something." Right? And because, as the song reiterated long after Tolstoy's time, "I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real." Right?

I felt I was happy because I felt I hadn't bought the bill of goods. I hadn't allowed myself to disappear into smug, apathetic complacency. Pain was the price you paid for being real, for being brave and creative enough to stand out; for facing life and saying, "Fuck you, I can take it." Pain was the price you paid to be free of the bullshit.

It never occurred to me at the time that perhaps this, too, was bullshit.

---
photo credit: I'm not smiling by Thao

Today, I realized, is the two-year anniversary of this blog. I suppose I should have prepared for it ahead of time so that I had something eloquent and thought-provoking to share. As it is, I've been laid low with the flu for a few days and the date barely registered until it was almost over. I will try to break through my medicinal haze to say something, at least. And I hope it will make sense. I'll let you be the judge, as I'm far too foggy right now.

A lot has gone on for me since I started this blog. Year one started with me being completely oblivious to why I really started the blog, thinking I was "just" going to create a forum for discussions about sexuality. By the end of that year, it had become a lot more than that for me, and the posts became not only about sex, but also about a number of different topics. The writing had become highly personal and confessional in nature, compared to my original intent. By the very end of 2006, I had divulged just about everything I'd ever been ashamed to tell anyone in this blog, and had also begun to do so in my outside life. It was a huge transition for me, and it was a difficult road to climb. There were times I thought I'd never see the light of day; I feared at points that I'd destroy myself in the effort I was making to heal and care for myself. But I kept going, and in the end, despite how scary it was to go through all of that, it was worth it.

And, by doing all that, when January 2007 rolled around, I was beginning to see the proverbial light at the end. I started the year out with a list of demands for what I wanted from that year. And I named it "Start Wearing Purple for me NOW, 2007," in tribute to a song by a band I'd become enamored of--a song that embodied the spirit of how I wanted to feel that year. At the time, that feeling seemed like a hopeful dream, but I hadn't felt it yet.

This New Year's Eve, I travelled to another city to see that band play,* and I met them. I hung out backstage with a bunch of interesting strangers, and they were interested in talking to me. And I felt like I was home. Not necessarily home because I was in some VIP area; home because I could go out and talk to strangers and not feel self-conscious. Home because I could enjoy myself without worrying that someone would think I wasn't worthwhile, or was too boring, or not a glamorous enough body type. Home because I was surrounded by smart, creative people who were not sad and dark; who were instead alive and energized. And still fucking cool. Home because I could have fun in the moment, and even decide to NOT do everything that was offered to me, and still feel happy and secure with my choices. Home because all I was was happy and laughing and enjoying the company of other people and of good music, and not thinking or worrying about anything else. Happy because I was being myself and only myself, and I was, finally, once again, glad to be her.

For me, that says a lot about what went right in 2007. It's been a slow and steady progress, but it's brought me to a place worlds away from where I was when I wrote my first post in 2006. Because while that "virgin post" in 2006 had a playful, cheerful tone, I was far from that. That was me, feeling very alone and very lost and dark, but putting on the "I'm just fine" mask I'd put on for the world for decades.

In January 2006, I wasn't cheerful, I wasn't playful. I was pretending. But at the moment when 2007 crossed into 2008, I was cheerful and playful, for real. And let me tell you, those two states of being feel worlds apart. There's no comparison. At all.

I'm not wearing the mask for the world anymore. In fact, the only articles of dress I'll be putting on from here on out will be strictly for my own pleasure. And I intend to not cover up very much. I'm not afraid anymore to show myself. I can actually wear purple now, literally and figuratively, and not even be that afraid of the attention I may get for it.

Yes, there's still work to be done. Yes, there's still road left to travel. But I've traveled a long way, and it looks like the gypsy caravan just pulled up to gave me a lift. I'm looking for a fun, weird, creative, inspirational, musical, wonder-full ride in 2008. I wish the same for all of you.

As for the blog and its anniversary, I'm not sure I ever imagined I'd still be doing it two years in. In the last few months, I've thought of ending it altogether. I've thought of renaming it. Of starting fresh with a new blog. Of just changing the look. Of not changing anything and just posting irregularly. Of trying to post regularly again. I've come to no decisions. So. We shall see. But one thing's for sure: whatever I decide, you've not heard the last of me.

---
*To get a sense of the transformative, transcendent, fuckin' rock-n-roll supertaranta gypsy punk party party afterparty experience that is Gogol Bordello live, check out this review of a live show. It's not from the show I went to, but it's like that at every show. Best attempt I've seen to capture the experience in words. Go see them live. You will never be sorry.

photo credit: Dansu Dansu Dansu by said&done

"Syl, I'm...concerned..."

Saw this interview with the unflappable GOP (God of Parson's) shortly after writing last night's post--proving that the Spirit of Tim comes to all those who are staring at a mess of disconnected materials and trying to figure out what the hell they're going to be able to put together to show the world the next day.

On his famous catch phrase:

"It came from teaching...it came from one of my classes at Parsons. I've used it for years and years and years...

"It's all about students...when they are frustrated and feel defeated and are troubled by a project they want to start all over again. And I say, 'Don't do that. We're going to take what we have here, make it work. And by working through the issues at hand, you'll learn infinitely more than to start from scratch. And that's something that works out."

Of course he's right. But I still feel like I'm staring at a bunch of disjointed material. At a fucking mess. But I suppose the hallmark of a good teacher is that you never give the students the answers; you let them find their own. Which, right now, feels both appropriate AND annoying.

When I was younger
I lived in fear
That incarceration of some kind is near
I checked my head in tact with rules
I nearly became
A goddamn fool
But I heard voices--not in the head
Out in the air
They called ahead
Through ripped out speakers
Through thick and thin
They found a shelter
Under my skin

I was an...interesting...child. I initially wanted to say "unusual," but I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is unusual or not. Certainly I've never heard anyone talk about it except for, say, religious mystics and occasionally someone like Eugene Hütz up above in those lyrics there. It is possible, though, if these people have mentioned it, that this is a common experience but no one talks about it. Or it may be in fact somewhat unusual. Regardless, let me get there already.

I've told many of what used to be my secrets in this blog, but this is one I have rarely confided to another person, and of the very few I've mentioned it to, I don't think I've ever mentioned the full breadth of it. I used to keep it to myself for fear it would be misunderstood or ridiculed or attempted to be over analyzed and explained away with logic or psychology, but now, today, I find I just don't care.

So. When I was younger, I was an interesting child. Just walking around in the world--and especially when I was on my own--I could hear and converse with things things most people don't think talk. Trees, for instance. Or the ocean. Or voices of people who weren't there. And I could have entire conversations with these things, if I was in the mood and if conditions were right.

I'm not talking here about schizophrenia. These things didn't tell me what to do or try to control my psyche. They weren't scary, angry, or destructive. And they didn't in any way take over my personality. Just the opposite--they were quite separate from me; they had nothing to do with me, and yet, I was aware in some way they were also a part of me, in that I was a conduit for them. I knew only I could hear them, and I knew others couldn't. Like Hütz says, not voices in my head, but out in the air. I heard them "in my head" the same way you would hear voices "in your head" if I were standing next to you and speaking and you heard the sound of my voice in your head. I processed them like speech, so they were in my head, but they weren't OF me, exactly--though, I guess I understood that without me they wouldn't be heard, sort of like that tree falling in the forest Zen koan. And I guess, thinking about it more, I also understood on some natural level, just by the fact of the way these voices transmitted, that everything IS "of" everything else--so in this way, of course, these voices were me and "of" me, at the same time they were also not. This probably sounds confusing, but that's the best I can do to explain it.

They also weren't voices like normal voices, exactly; particularly not the nature-based ones. Trees and water don't speak with human voices. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it. (And by the way, I don't necessarily think this is a "special skill,"--I maintain anyone can hear and speak with these things, if they want to; and if they listen carefully enough. The only perhaps special part of my story is that I happened to be able to connect to it without trying much. Which I'd described more accurately as "lucky" than "special.")

The more "human"-like voices--the ones I can best describe as seeming like invisible individuals (although that's not entirely accurate--I didn't and don't think they were human) were always to me the voices of friendly companions. They just showed up sometimes; for instance, to keep me company when I was walking home from school, or when I was thinking through a particularly knotty problem, or when they wanted to point out and share something particularly cool that was worth absorbing that I might not have focused on on my own. But sometimes they just showed up for the hell of it, just to say hi and just hang out and joke around and chat and...be cheerful and encouraging, I guess.

And that's what they were at almost all points, whether the human voices, or the nature voices; they were calm, open, supportive, inclusive, familiar. Most spoke to me like they'd known me a long time already; sometimes the human-like voices in particular took on tones that felt as if they considered themselves like affectionate aunts, or friends, or even occasionally a former lover from another life (by that I don't mean sexual, just casually affectionate in the special somewhat-romantic-tinged way an old-lover-turned-friend tends to be). Actually, I suppose some of the nature voices weren't always quite as casual. Trees, for instance, tended to be somewhat formal initially, in a "pleased to make your acquaintance, small thing from another species" kind of way, but even they still had that sense of familiarity and connectedness--as if they recognized the ability to exchange and it was no real surprise to them. In any case, they were all positive and I was glad to communicate with them.

It didn't happen all the time, every minute, by the way. It's not like every time I walked by a tree I could hear it talking or that all of nature or invisible voices were randomly screaming out at me at all times. Not at all. But if I took the time to slow down and WANT to talk to it, or to just to listen or happen to be quieter, I could. And when it did happen, it was a very quiet, calm experience, like passing a neighbor or friend on the street. An exchange was had and recognized and then we both moved on to do whatever it was we were there to do in life.

As a little kid, this was quite natural to me and I never thought anything about it. I never mentioned it to anyone else, but I don't think this was because I thought I had to keep it secret; it just seemed beside the point, and not important to bring up. As I got older, though, I began to realize other people thought that kind of stuff was weird. Talking or showing respect to trees like they were neighbors (or even, in the case of forests, like they were inhabitants of their own special "kingdom" that I just got the privilege to visit)? Uh, no, other kids didn't do that. And as I got older and the voices moved from just natural-based things to more...what...spiritual?...I don't like that word, but whatever the human voices were...I realized this was something that--though again it felt fine and natural to me--other people were not going to get, and might be alarmed by. So I did become conscious that it was better not to mention it to others. But given I'd never felt any need to share these experiences with other people--it had never occurred to me before I realized other people didn't hear this stuff to care if they could, or to try to bring someone else into these conversations---I decided to be, as before, just happy to experience them whenever I did and then just move on with my life as normal the way I would if I met any old person or friend on the street.

So I went along just quietly enjoying the company of this special gift I had. And I did think of it as that sometimes, a gift--particularly when it came to the nature-based stuff, which I could tell most people didn't easily experience. But then, as I closed in on my teenange years, I started to get concerned. At that time, I tended to have one particular voice companion more often than the others, and I was used to him, and I somehow decided that having these conversations, or this connection to other worlds or whatever it was, was going to be problematic for me as I grew into an adult. I also remember worrying for some reason that it would be hard to have boyfriends as long as this one particular "companion" was hanging around. I don't even know why--there was no connection to real life dating or romance in the conversations. But I suppose I was concerned the affection I felt in that "relationship," which was sort of a Buddhist-type divine, universal, limitless love sort of thing, wouldn't ever allow real-life love to measure up. And so I reasoned that if I wanted to have real, human love in the corporeal world, I needed all of this go. Let go of both the feeling of "other worldly" beings following me, offering me love and support, and of the natural world talking to me, connecting with me. I felt I needed it all gone to become the kind of "normal" that was necessary to succeed in the somewhat dry, rules-bound adult world I was destined to have to live in. That world didn't have time or patience for adults who had "fairy-tale" conversations with rocks and streams.

How many darkest moments and traps
Still lay ahead of us
How many final frontiers
We gonna mount
And maybe no victory laps

So, I had one last conversation. And I told my current most frequent "companion" voice that I needed him to go. That I needed it all to go, that I needed to just be a normal girl now, like everyone else. And he was very compassionate about it, if a little sad, and then...he left. Poof, just like that. It all left. And though I felt the absence from time to time--it was WEIRD to look at the world and not hear it talking back--I convinced myself it was the best thing and I moved forward into teen and adult life like a normal girl. Because--from limited view of adulthood garnered in the suburbs--well, voices, they weren't part of the rules of growing up. Adults didn't talk to the ocean. And they definitely didn't hear disembodied voices (if they didn't want to end up in the nuthouse).

I guess I don't want to judge the choice I made back then. I don't want to say it wasn't all for the best. Because at the time, it was what I needed; so it's what was meant to be. But I do think in making that choice/request, I chose to cut off something that was a vital piece of who I was. And with it, other vital connections to myself and the world around me might have gotten lost for a good long time.

At some point in my late thirties, I thought better of my choice to tell it all to go away. And I tried to bring it all back and found I couldn't. I'd look at a tree and feel...nothing. Almost less than nothing. I felt blocked. And it felt like I'd blown it; like I'd had one special chance and I'd thrown it away. I'd been given a gift and I chose to return it, and now it wasn't up for offer anymore. But there was nothing to be done about it, so I became resigned to the fact it was gone.

But if you stepped on path of sacred art
and stuck it out through thick and thin
God knows you become one
With undestructable

Around that time is when the beginnings of a pretty deep depressive period began to set in (seemingly unrelated to me at that time). It started small, grew slowly and steadily bigger and lasted and worsened for many years, until I could no longer bear it and sought out help. And this resulted in my finally realizing that for these and many more years the self I thought defined who I was wasn't a self at all, but an amalgam of the selves I thought other people thought a self should be for a girl like me.

And it's been a slow journey towards first realizing that, and now it feels like a slow journey towards deconstructing the false selves and finding out the true core that's been buried underneath. But I think the voices may be part of what's underneath.

I say this because I stayed home from work today. And after an inexplicable episode of joyful laughter that took over me this morning from the moment I looked in the mirror and said good morning to myself, I went and took a walk along the river in the sunlight of almost-spring. And I turned off my iPod and just listened. And the trees and water started talking to me. For the first time in such a long time.

And I think...no, I feel...this is a very good sign.

And so no longer live I in fear
Them are too greedy to pay my asylum bills
This is my life
And freedom's my profession
This is my mission throughout all flight duration
There is a core
And it's hardcore
All is hardcore when made with love
The love is voice of savage soul
This savage love is
Undestructable

I've been...just really happy lately.

It feels an odd thing to say. But it's true. And I find I'm also less and less afraid that claiming it will "curse" it and make it go away. I don't feel afraid to say it anymore. This also feels very strange to say.

But it's true. It came on slowly at first; just a little twinge here or there. But in the last two weeks, it's been almost constant. Just feeling good, feeling at one with the world--or maybe it's feeling as one in myself and being completely cool with that--even when the world is off kilter around me. Even feeling joyful sometimes; having moments when my heart feels ready to burst out in blooms like all the trees I see around me and I just can't stop smiling or singing to myself or communicating with trees.

This is not something I'm used to.

I think maybe I haven't written about this feeling as it's come over me much because; well, one, I've been busy with a new job I started recently, and two, I think I felt afraid that if I said it, it would sound like bragging or smugness or rubbing it in others' faces or possibly that I was being inauthentic...like I was trying to prove something (""Look!!! Look how happy I am!!! Really!!!! Really!!!!")--like I'd appear as if I were trying to convince myself and others of it.

But it's not about that. And it suddenly occurred to me tonight how entirely ridiculous it is that I saw absolutely no dangers of inauthenticity, bragging, etc. in writing repeatedly about unhappiness when it hit me. So why should this be any different?

Anyway, what's happened to me lately...it's really odd. It's like this kind of letting go. I can't explain it because it's almost a physical thing; as if a really heavy layer of something has been lifted off me, and I'm just walking around lighter than before. But it's not exactly physical. It is as though I've finally lost something, though, something that has been some kind of invisible albatross for many years. The strange thing is, I don't even know what the albatross WAS; I never got to see it. It just, through small tiny baby steps of work, seems to have just lifted, and I'm just...different. Things seem easier; and I seem less impacted by the small everyday things that used to get me spiraling into negativity.

And it seems that along with this is this fresh, slowly burgeoning change in how I sense myself in the world. I just wrote that and realized I'd said "sense myself" instead of "see myself," which is the familiar phrase. And now I realize that is exactly it! There's this shift from seeing myself to just sensing myself. This move from a staunch stance of "I think, therefore I am," to "I am, therefore I am."

Am I making sense to anyone out there? I think what this means is I'm losing my self-consciousness. Which is SUCH a relief. But even more than that--or maybe it's the same...what I'm trying to say here...and this is so new and confusing....

What I'm trying to say is that...well, for most of my life, I've created my identity (and others' identities, come to think of it) from identifiers--which are, of course, mental constructs. I thought that thoughts--mine and others' about me (by either agreement with or reacting against them)--were what made me me. Like this:

What do I believe in? The answer to that defines who I am; I am what I believe.
What do I know? The answer is who I am
What is my cultural identity? This is who I am.
How much more do I know than others? This is who I am.
How well do I fit the requirements for the labels of "cool," "smart," "pretty," "sexy," "talented," etc.? This is who I am.

Actually, these ALL boil down to the first statement: What do I believe in? This is who I am. Because all of the others in their way are beliefs about myself that I invent for myself.

And this has led to inordinate anger, frustration, and fear when I'm confronted with others whose opinions butt up significantly and forcefully against my own. I've been in therapy for a few years now; and the whole time I've never really been able to grasp how one can believe strongly in something (say, for instance, that racism is awful and destructive) and while holding that belief strongly, at the same time be okay with the fact that others don't.

I think this was because those beliefs were who told myself I was. I made those beliefs my identity. So someone opposing that belief was, on some level, threatening my right to exist.

I've been living so much in my head. And my head created labels for everything: for myself and others. I was alternative. That person was mainstream. This other person: materialistic. Me: stubborn. That person: racist. Me: creative. On and on and on. All these one-word stories for myself and everyone; all generated by me, all designed to keep my thoughts protected and safe from encroachment of others. Interestingly, I had both a great anger for/resistance to labels and "grades"--and yet such a great need for them, too. In fact, I made my resistance of them part of my so-called identity.

I'm getting off track. I'm sorry this post is so loose--I'm free-forming here.

The point is, this shift I was talking about earlier, and the happiness and lightness...it seems to be about losing all that. About getting out of my head--"losing my mind," if you will. About realizing none of that shit matters; that none of that stuff, none of my thoughts or ideas or beliefs, none of those identifiers define me. That I'm just ME. That's it. That's all it has to be about.

Moving away from thought and into this greater...sense of being. This is what feels lighter. And, by the way, this doesn't mean I think thinking or intelligence is useless. Far from it. It's useful; but it's just a THING--not THE thing.

You know, all this time as I've been healing, I've been trying so hard to figure out--now that I've had to let go of so many old, negative patterns of self-definition--what the new way to define myself will be. I kept thinking, "Okay, but what will I BE now? I'm emptying out of stuff, but what will I fill up with? Who can I say I am now, if I'm not any of those things anymore? I need to find an answer before it's too late!"

And damn if it hasn't turned out that the answer is I'm not anything.

And this...it turns out...is everything.

I'm not anything. I just am.

I'm not anything. It's possibly the one phrase that has scared me the most all these years--the one thing I was most terrified to be identified with; to believe about myself. The thing I've worked consistently to avoid anyone thinking about me.

Who knew in the end that it would be the source of all empowerment?

I am staggered by this.

Here's how I want it to be.

I want time. Time to sit, taking in the vibrating air between us. Time to know the feel of every miniscule measure of my palm on your cheek, or on your arm, or against your own palm. And to feel every miniscule measure of yours on mine. Not moving, but still, to take it all in.

I want time to know the feel of all that. Time to not rush like teenagers. Time to know we have all the time in the world, because nobody is going anywhere. Time to know we're not going anywhere because there is nothing at risk, because here, here, here is where we are, here is what we want, here is where we're going to be and it's good, good, good.

I want tenderness beyond words--and still trying to say it with words even though it's beyond words.

And so it's time, time, time that you love
And it's time, time, time.

I want time. I want time to be held. Held not tightly, insistently (because yes, there will be that, too, much of that, but first, please this). Held gently, warmly. Held not as a means to progress to other things, but held simply because for you, holding this warm being full of light that is me close to you is as precious as anything; no more is needed, because there is time. Time for this before all the more that is there to have. (And there will be so much more. But first, please, this.)

I want time. Time to be held like this, held until inside there is no more shaking, no more questions, no more doubt. And I want time to hold you in exactly this way, too.

I want time to feel the warmth flowing between us. I want time for our souls to pause and see each other and greet each other with, hello, friend. And then smile the word love.

I no longer crave the spike and the crash of hard chemical candy love-lust. I want warm, homemade, slow-baked scones with Devonshire cream. I want time to lick the crumbs off each others' fingers; kiss it off each other's mouths. Time to boil water for tea, and steep it, and then sip it slowly, together on the couch.

And so it's time, time, time that you love
And it's time, time, time.

I don't want the rush of wildfire and then the scorched forest of cold ashes. I want a long, steady burn. Time, time, time to luxuriate in the glow. Time to build it high and steady and strong, time to thrill at every crackle, time to warm our skin now that we've come out from the cold.

I want time. Time to savor the sound of your voice in my ear, and your scent, and to think of how much it feels like home. To know I no longer need to be afraid that the door to that home will ever shut me out, or trap me inside. Time to get used to the fact that it will always be open, and that I am both always free and always welcome to come inside.

I want time to wander around the rooms and get my bearings. I want time to sit with you in the garden there; with all of you--the who you are beyond everything else--and come to know finally, finally, that it's safe to keep my door open as well.

And so it's time, time, time that you love
And it's time, time, time.

---
Photographs from the marvelous series Guests by Christopher Bucklow. All photos copyright of the artist. If any of you can afford to purchase art, please buy his work. It's beautiful.

This was so hard for me to write and I'm not even sure what I said here or if it makes any sense; I just kept going and willed myself through it until it felt like I'd finished. I'm not reading it or editing it because then I'm afraid I won't post it. It may be a while before I can come back and read what I wrote. So I apologize in advance for any messiness or lower quality writing than normal.

The idea for this post came from here.

Note: The two links that point to images of the woman's body are NSFW.

---
Dear Body,

I've been avoiding writing you this letter, so I know it's something I've got to do.

Why don't I want to talk to you?

Actually, that was the only thing I could think to say for the last few weeks since I thought about starting this post, "Dear Body, We've never really talked."

I find this to be shocking. I never really realized it before. But it's true. I've never really communicated with you in any way. And for that I'm so, so sorry.

I'm trying to start now. But it's really hard. This letter is going to be a mess. I apologize in advance. I hope you'll stick with me more than I've stuck with you all these years. I know I may not deserve it, but...I hope you'll hear me out.

What really prompted me to write today after waiting so long was that last night I couldn't sleep, and I ended up watching a film on some independent movie channel that I'd already seen once. But I watched the whole thing again, anyway. And in this film, there is a main character, a young woman of my coloring, who is often seen naked. And I remember the first time I watched this film finding her somewhat mesmerizing.

It was much the same this time. I found myself completely absorbed in watching her body as it moved across the screen. And while watching her, I was overwhelmed with this profound feeling of connection also this instant, deep sadness that wailed both straight into and also poured out of my heart--almost like mourning. This is the only way I can describe it; the reaction was simply visceral, and not easily given words. But then again, Body, you felt it, so you know. We felt it together. Or maybe it was you who made me feel it. Maybe it was you who was telling me it was time to feel these things.

In any case, when conscious thought followed the emotional response, I recognized with some shock that: 1) her naked form looked almost exactly like yours did when I was in my early 20s, and 2) I was thinking to myself that she was beautiful.

This may sound odd to some outsiders that it was hard for me to piece these two together as connected thoughts. But I don't think you'll be surprised by this, will you?

Because I was was looking at this other girl's body, so much like you were then, and responding to her in all her erotic, naked power. I mean, she was stunning. Just this marvelous, vibrant thing, full of life, in this absolutely mesmerizingly beautiful body.

But when I looked at you, I couldn't see any of it. When I looked at you looking much like this, here is what I thought:

"Yeah, you're thin, but look, your belly still has a curve outward. It's not flat. It totally ruins your chances of having a really nice body. That curve is so aesthetically unpleasing. You'd better hide it. Wear control-top tights or something."

"Look at how your breasts are sagging. And you're only 20! See how they are heavy at the bottom like that, with that slight curve at the top? That's not normal. They should be round all the way around, and up higher. Guys will be disappointed in them. Sure, you can make them look good in a bra, but when you get naked, well, guys'll put up with them, they won't say anything, but they won't be thinking anything good."

That's the kind of thing I said to you, when you were generous enough to gift me with the shape you did. I ridiculed you and picked you apart. I couldn't even see what was in front of me.

But I wasn't comfortable even with that. I knew enough between the obsessive media focus on eating disorders and my feminist studies that it wasn't "right" to criticize my body. And on top of that, I was never comfortable, even from early childhood, with how much focus people put on my appearance. So I didn't even like attention to you--positive or negative--coming from myself, let alone others. And so to solve this dilemma, I decided to completely ignore you, block you out. I chose to pretend you didn't exist in any real or important way; that you weren't a part of THE REAL ME. Any reference to you or thoughts of you I just...let slip away as if they didn't exist.

Do you remember that one guy in my dorm telling me in an offhanded way I had the perfect body, and me just staring at him blankly? My response was beyond just not wanting to believe him or trying to be modest--I simply couldn't conceive what he was saying. I felt nothing except some slight confusion, like he was talking another language and so I couldn't possibly have a response. I didn't forget I did this to you, if you thought i did.

Do you remember all my lovers who went on about how great your breasts were? Do you remember how deep down, I felt surprised every single time, no matter how many times it was volunteered freely? How I just sort of pretended I didn't hear? I didn't let myself feel anything about what I was doing. But I didn't forget I did this to you.

Do you remember how tense I felt whenever someone went to kiss my stomach, wishing he'd move past that flawed spot quickly, so I didn't have to think about how I didn't measure up? And then just pushing that thought out of my mind? I pretended I didn't do this. But I didn't stop. And I didn't forget.

Do you remember how I almost always covered you up with big, big tops and long skirts or round babydoll dresses all those years so no one could see most of my shape? Oh I was good at pretending that I was revealing stuff, but nothing was really clear and out there to see.

I need to say this to you, though I am ashamed to say it.

I was not proud of you. I was ashamed of you. I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve that. You were lovely and good and I humiliated you and hid you away like you were a defective child.

Not because I thought you were ugly, or I didn't love you. I didn't think you were ugly; and I loved you, more than you could probably understand.

But I didn't want anyone to see you. Because I thought...

I don't know. I don't know why I was ashamed of you. I don't understand. I wish I could understand.

The other day I was talking to my therapist about having urges to eat when I wasn't hungry, and why I don't seem to want to let myself get thin. She asked why I thought I might be doing this. I responded without thinking, "Maybe it's because I'm afraid of what will happen if I'm thin."

She asked me what I thought would happen. And I had no answer. I'm not sure. I just know I'm terrified. Terrified to be thin. Terrified to be looked at. Terrified to be attractive. Terrified of what I might attract.

I should keep going with that list, free forming, because I'm getting somewhere, but I'm too terrified to keep typing that list.

But. For now.

Maybe, like the "defective child" analogy I made earlier, it was not that I couldn't see the beauty in you, not that I couldn't love you, but that I thought the world would be too hurtful to you. I wanted to protect you from what would happen when exposed to others. So I hid you away.

Writing that made me want to start crying.

But I don't know. Maybe it was that. And maybe it was even worse than that.

I never thought I hated you. I really didn't. But there is evidence to the contrary. I hid you away, and didn't let you get love and attention, from myself or others. I ignored you. I denied you were important to me. I said you didn't matter. I didn't let friends and admirers of yours come around. And if they braved my displeasure and admired you anyway, I made their lives very difficult.

And I did this all while I was telling myself and you how much I loved you, but that other people just didn't understand. Only *I* could really love you. Everyone else was a sham.

At that stage I wasn't hurting you physically, but damn if that doesn't sound like an abusive relationship to me. Neglect? Abandonment? Denial? Possessiveness?

Maybe I was not a good person to you. No, not maybe. I was not a good person to you.

But it's not over yet. I wasn't satisfied with that level of dysfunction. I let whatever that was in me that was doing that to you grow. And I started hurting you. I treated you very badly. I force fed you, in a way, until you became distorted into an almost surreal version of the things I'd hated about you. My breasts grew bigger and, in my eyes, even saggier. My stomach got larger and, in my eyes, more grossly engorged. I made you into the object I was afraid the world saw you as to begin with. I forced you out of all proportion until when I saw myself in photos, I didn't even know who I was looking at anymore. The adult body I'd started with had ceased to exist. I ate and drank and hid from everyone and let your mood get lower and lower, and your health worse and worse. I let it get so that walking up three flights of stairs got you out of breath.

I took everything you gave me, everything you were, all that sweet, pure, goodness, and I hurt it in every way possible until you were a crippled, gasping version of your former self, desperately trying to hang on, wondering why the hell this was happening and when the hell it was going to stop.

I don't know why I did this to you. Because you ARE ME.

Maybe that was why I did it. I didn't want you--a body--to be me, the essence of me.

Whatever the reason, the end result was that I treated you the way I was afraid everyone else would. In trying to protect you, I made my worst fears for you come true. *I* was the unfeeling monster. I was the one who looked upon you with disgust. I was the one who told you when you were thin that no guy who ever showed interest could ever be interested in more than just wanting your body. I was the one who when you were fat who told you no one loved you because of how you looked. And now I'm the one telling you that if you lose weight, you'll never be loved for anything except your body again. And I'm the one who's telling you Ithat at forty you'll never have that 20-something body back, especially due to the problems *I've* caused for you--and that this, no matter how thin you become now, will still make you unappealing to the world.

I was the one who never let you out without fear, or let you feel your full joy of being, except for when I was having sex and became too sensorially overwhelmed to think about suppressing you anymore.

This is my attempt to try to testify. To bring let you know I am not blind to the things I've done. That I get it. I know you've been going it alone, trying your best to stay afloat despite all the abuse I've piled on you. And you've done marvelously. I can not say the same for myself.

I'm so proud you've managed to hold up all this time. You are so much better than I've ever given you credit for.

I want to say how sorry I am for all of this, all I've done.

I know sorry isn't not enough. I know you deserve more. But it's a start and I think it's important to start with saying I am so very, very sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't enjoy you when you gave me so much; that I couldn't feel anything except either bad or blank about you. I'm so sorry I've hurt you. And I've hurt me. I've hurt us, because we are the same. And I want you to know that I know this now.

I hope you will forgive me for not knowing it before, and for what I've done as a result of that.

I want you to know that I won't stop at apologizing. I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to back up my words with actions.

I will not ignore you anymore. I will not pretend you don't exist. And I am trying so, so hard not to hurt you anymore. I know I need help with this; I know I can't stop alone. I'm getting this help.

Because it's time for me to stop this. I don't want to hurt you anymore. I don't want to be scared to be in whatever my real body is at this age. I want to find out what my real body is at this age. I want to give you the freedom to show me.

I want to stop being scared. I want to stop thinking what you look like has a direct correlation to how well I'll be loved, to how shallow the world is, to how shallow I am, to how I'll be treated.

I want to stop feeling LOOKED AT. And I want to stop punishing you for being looked at.

I want to live together and work together and talk to each other all the time.

I want to accept you, as you are, and feel real love for you. Not love tempered with fits of compulsive, unconscious abuse.

To feel proud of you, as you are. To show you off and not think I have to be ashamed because of it.

I want us to be friends. I want us to be lovers.

I want us to love and be proud of each other. I don't want to be separate entities, passing notes through a crack in a wall.

I want symbiosis. As it always should have been.

I want joy coursing through you. Not just my soul. Through YOU, Body, through my breasts, which are mine, and not needing of adjectives. Through my belly, which is mine and not needing of adjectives. Through all of you, which is me and not needing of adjectives. Except one. Joyful. No matter how your lines are drawn, we will always call them joyful.

More with that word joy. The most important thing:

I want to enjoy you.

In my remaining years, finally, finally, I want to enjoy you.

I want all that. But first I have to learn how to talk to you. And as you can tell from this disjointed and sometimes repetitive letter, I still haven't learned how to communicate well with you yet.

I'm trying to do better. But just like with a family member you've seen but never really developed a relationship with, I kind of love you in the abstract, from the outside, but I don't know how create a love bond with you in a highly personal way.

But I really want to. And you've stuck it out and stuck around, so I'm hoping that means you do, too.

So this letter is my very ineloquent way of asking you, will you help me figure out how to do this? I need some help and I'm feeling pretty shaky, and I'm not even sure how to get started. I'm going to do everything I can on my own, but maybe you can help show me the way to release some things. I'd like to work together so we both feel safe and happy and ultimately can see in each other the goodness that's really there.

I want to see you. Let's not hide anymore.

It's okay.

Please tell me it's okay.

Love,

Me

An interesting thing: one night last week, I said aloud to someone for the first time that I think I hate my body. And have been hating on my body for...oh, maybe at least 30 years. Acting like an made-for-Lifetime-TV-abuser to it.

Fact: I said it out loud, came home, and went to bed shortly after. I woke up in the morning and weighed myself and I had lost five pounds. Something about that felt related; like I'd gotten rid of a tiny bit of something, at least, that was--perhaps literally--weighing me down.

I wonder about that moment, when someone who's been abusive finally can step back enough to get a glimpse of what they are. To begin to accept the name of it, and own one's actions. Not just regret for one small incident, but the admission of a whole patterned tendency to be an mean, cruel, angry, bullying asshole. About what brings that perspective on. And about whether it's at all freeing to come to terms with it. If the knowledge can actually bring on change.

In any case, it doesn't feel cathartic, but it felt like just a tiny bit of release.

I wrote about this a few posts ago, but seriously, my behavior toward my body was--no IS--so stereotypically abusive. Not only is it angry, and manipulative, and physically cruel, but I told myself it wasn't hatred I was displaying, it was love. And I was different in public and in private. As a feminist, I knew it was bad form to admit to hating my body. So I said I didn't in public. I was nice to myself in public. But in secret, I whispered cruel, soul and confidence-destroying things to my body. I sectioned it into tiny, tiny bits, and then applied unseen torture to all of it. I mean all the things they do in torture, too--ignoring its humanity for long periods, playing good cop/bad cop with it, exposing it to cruel people who didn't respect it, force feeding it, preventing it from moving freely and easily...

I am not going to blame myself for this, as it was unconscious. And I think certain parts of it were brought on by post-traumatic stress from my sexual assault, and from some problematic views I was raised/forced to absorb. But the fact is it is there and I guess it's time to fully face up to the fact that I have been saying, "I hurt you because I love you" for a long time now.

And also face up to the shame and hate I've been associating with my body for a long time. Just get it all out. Maybe other things along with those five pounds will begin to be released as a result. This has worked for me before. Sometimes one has to face one's greatest fears for them to go away. Sometimes one has to admit to the parts one hates most about oneself--the things one hides in the dark--to stop being so fucking cruel. Sometimes you have to do what you think will bring you the world's worst hatred; because only through doing that can you realize that the world's worst hatred is A FUCKING BIRTHDAY CAKE compared to your own inner hatred.

So. After having had that conversation, all I've been able to think about is this--and this one scene from the film Lovely and Amazing. Unfortunately, I can't find a video clip of the scene online anywhere, but maybe you've seen it. In it, Emily Mortimer's character, an up-and-coming actress, stands in front of a guy she's just slept with (another better-known actor) and asks him to review her body honestly. And after only the tiniest amount of convincing, he does. He goes from top to bottom, and just lists everything that's possibly not perfect about her (and a few items that were nice). It's a riveting scene; neither character is displaying any emotion at all; they're acting like it's just casual, friendly conversation. But the whole situation is just charged with this subtle brutality, one that at least I recognize all around me, every day. And how unconsciously brutal he is being in his gently-voiced, casual assessment of every inch of her body, and how unconsciously brutal she is being in her desire for it, and her almost hungr