Giving it Your Best

Life is learning to embrace new ideas, gathering things that are appealing, making friends and experiencing a whole spectrum of joy and pain. 

Then it is learning to let go of certain ideas, discarding things that are no longer appealing and trying new things even when you feel caught up in stagnation and pain.

We set goals and sometimes we realize that even achievements have limitations towards our happiness. 

Sometimes we want more out of life than we have and live for tomorrow's that slip away once we reach them. 

We only have today, we love who we love, we achieve what we can and follow the path of foolishness when we dwell so much on the past or the future. 

Trying your best, giving it your all, or whatever you have left, is the reality of what it means to be human. 

Be as good a human as you can and lift yourself and others up.

SG

Gathering Thoughts

I have felt this grief before; it is as poignant now as it was then. Perhaps all the little bits of grief we taste throughout our lives are meant to temper the soul, to prepare it for the bigger grief that we all must face as time and age take all that we love and all that we are.

It is important to learn to sit with grief, although I'm not sure if that phrasing is correct. I once described grief in a poem as a stone that sits in your soul or like water that bursts forth out of the deep wells of sadness that you feel when you go through loss.

Reflecting back on my last relationship, I realize something: I was able to be myself around him, which was marvelous, a true gift that bolstered my sense of self in many ways. Yet I was also stuck in one version of myself, not letting the other aspects of my personality shine.

When he broke things off, I started to grasp about, wondering what I did wrong. Did I bore him with the couple of subjects I had been going down the rabbit hole on? Did I overwhelm him with the mysterious illness that made me dizzy, tired, and feeling off? All I could do for a couple of months was say, "I'm feeling slightly better today but still dizzy," and feel just a little bit crazy.

I wondered if I had maintained my interest in photography and art, if I had shown him that I could rollerblade and gone on bike rides with him, maybe he would still want to be with me. Or I thought, "What if I change myself to be more interesting?" But then a realization came that I cannot do that; I can only be who and what I am, so I've been doubling down on that.

There is within me a place of rejuvenation that I use when overwhelmed. It requires uninterrupted time to access it, and since we've broken things off, I've been searching it out on my walks with Koru. I put my hand to my heart and let the feelings come; sometimes the tears come, and the deep sadness of loss overflows, and I sob. Sometimes I feel more peace; I let the knot of tension subside, and I allow myself to just feel whatever I need to feel. There is gratitude for what I had with him and an understanding of his situation. There is also sadness because I love him; we felt so good together, we were good together, and it's hard to reconcile that feeling with the knowledge that we are separated, apart, and all the hopes that I had for that relationship have to be buried in the little graveyard of hopes that lives silently in my soul.

Many dreams are buried there: relationships that didn't turn out, wishes that didn't come true, and nine little babies that were never born. It is a sacred place; I walk reverently through it on occasion, and most of my ghosts no longer hurt or haunt me. I have a feeling that the ghosts of my most recent buried hopes are going to haunt me for a while; they were beautiful and strong hopes. I miss them.

Not There Yet

I didn't just wake up one day and become an ally, that is a work in progress. There is a lot of stuff that goes through my head that isn't accepting and supportive of marginalized groups. There is a lot of hatred and fear in my heart. I didn't intentionally put it there, but it comes out sometimes and a better part of me wonders where it comes from. I think it's there in all of us in various ways. It's a fear and mistrust of others, it's a monster that is fed when we don't question the quality of information coming into our heads, without or within. It is something we must be vigilant to fight against for our own sake and for the sake of the others around us. 

Hiding

I have been hiding all of my life, observing but not commenting, and scared but not sure what to do about it. My strategy has been to hide so that I wouldn't have to defend myself, so that I wouldn't be attacked for what I said, or humiliated because of my ignorance. 

I have been afraid and defensive of my own weaknesses, I wanted to compete but I didn't want to lose, losing just seemed to prove how worthless I was. At least that's how I felt.

Was this societal indoctrination? Raised to be submissive, to not question authority, maybe it was. All I know is that I didn't want to stand out, to be the center of attention, to draw the disapproval of others towards me. It's still hard to break away from that tendency. It's easier to hide and live a life of quiet anonymity.

Yet I've always admired those who are bold, the people unafraid to show their flaws, the people standing up to bullies and telling them that it is not OK. 

I'm inspired by intelligent people, who lift people up, who are working to make a difference in the world, people who don't back down in the face of ignorance.

I'm envious of people who can just have fun with life, who see the bad but are also able to celebrate the good things in life. Those people that celebrate holiday's and the accomplishments of themselves as well as others.

I tend to fall into a trap of doing instead of being. Trying to organize life instead of living and enjoying life. There has to be a balance and balance isn't easy to find for me. There are all kinds of things I enjoy doing, writing, drawing, painting, photography, roller blading, hiking, walking, gardening and cooking among many others. But sometimes I am paralyzed by indecision, afraid and hyper fixate on cleaning the house or making a budget. I try to organize so that I'm not wasting money or time and in spite of that I quite often end up doing both. 

I am aware that I need to change, to be more brave. Hiding is a good strategy sometimes, it preserves me from being overwhelmed and burned out by the cruelty of the world, but hiding should be tempered with speaking up, too many of us are hiding.

Overachiever

There is a ball of hurt in my chest that is there despite having accomplished a lot of the big life goals I set out for myself, an education, a nice home, and a beautiful family. I still look out at the world as someone who needs to achieve something to be worthy of all the wonderful glittering experiences that I think I should be having. 

I feel a lack of, personality, worthiness, ability, and intelligence. I feel like these things are keeping me from having this idealized picture of friendship and competence. 

I want to retreat into a world of books and television and just be by myself because it's safe there. But my "by myself" time is actually quite full of remote work and adorable but needy dogs.

I feel like I need time to recharge my batteries by being left alone to think deeply and read but I so seldom get the chance to do that. Sometimes I think that a lot of these self-confidence issues and the stress in my life would dissolve if I could just spend time doing core activities like that.

For most of my life, I've felt like I needed to learn, I've had a great interest in many things, but in a way, I wasn't driven by what was most enjoyable to me but what I felt was a skill that I lacked.

I've spent a lot of time organizing my interests into a plan of action and trying to make progress on all of them at once. This doesn't work, I just get frustrated and give up. I need to focus on a single interest at a time and make progress toward it.

The task then becomes narrowing down what I want to work towards to that one thing.

I kind of like the idea of learning Python but also like the idea of learning a financial software called Anaplan. One would lead me down a path towards a coding career (possibly), the other further down the path of finance skills.

Then the trick is to do things I just naturally like; gardening, health, drawing, painting, and music putting time aside to do them without putting pressure on myself to do them.

At my company, they're all about automation and I have the skills to pull people together to work on things but I don't have the skills to do the automation. 

I'm a bit frustrated.

Some reflection

 I am almost 44 years old! Reflecting back I acknowledge the struggles that I've faced, how I've grown, what makes me the person that I am today. I'm perfectly imperfect. 

My biggest periods of growth have come from accepting uncertainty and letting go of beliefs that were given to me that no longer fit. I'm emotionally, physically and mentally healthier because of this. 

The night before last night I got stuck at the bottom of the canyon to Ophir. I had gone down the road to call Matt and had kept the headlights on so that cars zooming down the canyon would realize I was there. Now I knew the battery could die if I did that, so I turned it on every once in a while and ran it. But I didn't want to keep running it so eventually I stopped turning it on. Well the inevitable happened and the battery died. So lesson learned. 

Now I could have just stayed there waiting for someone to pass by, but I felt strong enough to at least make a start on walking. At least if no one came by then I would get back to camp. 

It's a pretty safe area, not much wildlife to worry about, so I wasn't particularly scared. But I was a little intimidated by the distance since I had driven that road earlier and it took a lot longer than I thought it would to get to camp. 

I tried to take in the beauty of the night sky, I could see thousands of stars. I tried to appreciate that I wasn't particularly cold, even though the wind was whipping around me. I had a moment of awe as I looked down at the ground and saw the wind dancing through the light on my phone. I also saw a deer on the other side of the road. 

I couldn't help but cry a bit, sob actually as I walked. I felt so alone, a feeling I know well. I think we all know this feeling well. 

I let the sobs subside into calm and just kept walking. Then when I was almost back my son passed me on the road and gave me a ride the last bit of the way. 

I was less tired than I thought that I would be. Probably because I had been exercising a lot the past week on the long trip I was on with my cousins. In fact I'm proud of how healthy I feel, I'm not as sore and worn out as I would have been in past years, though I am still sore and worn out. 

I'm not immune to bouts of melancholy but they're fewer and last for only a short amount of time. My life has been good and I still have a lot if it left to live! 

Grief

More constant than other companions, a probe of deep feelings, of sadness and loss. Sharper than love, easier to recognize, grief.

It is easy to want it to end. Harder to accept it, harder to sit with it. 

It sits so heavy on the heart. You would think it was a stone, but it's more like water. Water that seeps down into the ache and brings the tears up through your heart, through your throat and through your eyes.

It is a recognition of loss, an appreciation for what you had, a sorrow that isn't easily healed, grief.

For me it is most intense when I've lost someone I love. Especially if it seems so needless, so pointless, so empty. But some things aren't easily healed and so I sit with grief and try to feel it without it collapsing around me. 

There's Nothing

I seem to have the talent of getting myself into situations that I really don't want to be in.

It's usually the result of a curiosity for something different, a fascination perhaps of pushing past my own warning sensors. 

Here I am, midnight, searching for something. A distraction perhaps, a human connection, or just anything with any substance to it.

There's nothing

At this moment, at this point I can't find it. 

But I keep searching, hoping to find a salve for the empty feeling I currently have. 

I know that it's pointless, and perhaps I should turn my mind again to reading instead of this empty search. 

I'm reaching out to the void and grasping, trying to find myself there, but comming up short. 

SG

Recovering, Moving forward

Last Tuesday I woke up near 3 am with a terrible sore throat and just feeling like crap. I felt that way for a solid 6 days and today I woke up feeling like a burden had been lifted. 

I was useless for most of the past week, looking around at the clutter in the house with no will or energy to clear it up. Today I got up and cleaned the house, my lungs are still a bit heavy, I'm still a bit tired, but I think the worst is over.

Today is a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. I don't feel qualified to say too much about him, to quote him, or act like I know what his fight was all about. I only know snippets, bits of info from movies and TV shows, a little bit from history class, quotes from people's Facebook posts. I don't feel qualified at all to talk about him, his life, his legacy.

All I know is that he was trying to fight injustice and that he was trying to make a better world for his children. 

I know that one group of people subjugated another group and justified that by making the other group into a subcategory. This happens all over the world, it still happens. 

People enslave others to benefit from their labor. They make others into this subcategory of "less than" to steal from them and subdue the guilt they might have felt for doing that to another human being. 

It is easy to want to just say, "that was so long ago." Or to say "I didn't do that to others, I am not my ancestors." Maybe I could feel like that if the people who had been subjugated had been summarily restored to a livelihood back then. If they would have been treated with respect and invited into society as equals, I would think "let's leave all that in the past." But I know as well as everyone else that didn't happen.

That the people who had been held as property had to fight for their standing in society. Not only that but they are blamed when things get violent because "we should be able to just work things out peacefully."

We know that nothing will change if no one puts up a fuss, that's the way of the world. There's a concept I've heard of recently, that of getting into "good trouble." Fighting against oppression, racism, bigotry, hatred, and fighting for our survival in this world are all things to fight for. 

For further reading and understanding, I'm going to read what he wrote.

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/king-papers

https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/books-bibliography/

What is Happening?

For some reason, no matter how many times I try to explain what's going on with me, it doesn't help.

I'm going to describe what I go through. Most of the time my breasts hurt, from the sides radiating into my armpits they ache, the middle and upper areas are tight and hurt if pressed, my nipples get chaffed easily. So I try not to agitate any of this area. I don't want anyone touching or bumping them. I want to protect them. Trying to make me aroused by touching them makes me feel violated, hurt, upset, withdrawn and really sad. Because I know that they are the fantasy of men, the objects of desire and are intricately tied up in the desirability of a woman. I know that it seems like I'm withholding a part of myself from my partner and it seems like part of the problem that I have in my relationship.

The other things that I'm dealing with vary in severity from day to day and sometimes aren't a problem. Most of the month I have a degree of what is called brain fog it makes it hard to concentrate, it makes me feel confused and it's sometimes hard to make decisions because I can't think through them quickly. Day 1 of my period I know I'm going to start because the brain fog suddenly clears and it's like coming out into the sun after being in the fog all month. 

About a week before the start of my cycle (bleeding) I get progressively more achy, it's hard to move, I don't have energy, my joints hurt, my muscles hurt. It's harder to sleep because everything hurts (which makes everything worse, I need a lot of sleep to deal with my body). I get sensitive to lights and sounds, I'll have a light headache or occasionally sharp stabbing pains in different areas of my head or a migraine. I get more anxious, confused, clumsy (I tip things over and drop things), I forget things and it's hard to concentrate. My sense of smell tends to increase and some smells make me feel nauseated. All I want to do is sleep but ironically I also need to pee a lot as well so it's hard to settle in.

Then the more insidious side of this disorder start up, I don't like to look in the mirror because I don't like what I see, my body, my face, my hair, my clothes all make me feel a little sad. I push these thoughts away but then I have other thoughts. I feel like I'm not good at my job, the dirty house makes me feel like a failure, the projects that we're working on are overwhelming because I can't seem to get them under control (and I start feeling like my house is just crap anyway), my children's struggles make me anxious and sometimes I'll start ruminating about them all night. 

Meanwhile

I usually start off my week days by getting up to take the girls to school. I stumble out of bed and put on some warm sweatpants and my glasses (sometimes my contacts depending on how well I slept). Sometimes waking up interrupts the aching, fitful, non-rest that I was enduring and when I get back from dropping off the girls I can go back to sleep having moved around a bit and worked out the kinks. 

After sleeping a bit more I wake feeling a bit better and get to work (sometimes taking a bath right before starting but sometimes holding off because I need to get working).

I settle into work by following a familiar routine, tea and toast, pitcher of water and cup. I get through my day often not realizing until too late that I've got nothing planned for dinner and this creates anxiety in me. Usually by the time you get home I've finally gotten into the thick of things at work and I can't stop to fix you an after work snack otherwise I'm worried that I'm never going to catch up at work. 

Sometimes your mom lets us know that we're invited for dinner, sometimes we play the "what should we do for dinner game", sometimes I can make something simple. most of the time I'm overwhelmed and not ready or able to cook anything. 

For most of the day I'm battling these symptoms and trying to be a productive member of society. I do all I can to get through the day, until we lay down and relax,