One Month and the Buzz

So, I took a month off. I’ve missed you.

Health-wise I’ve been up and down, but more ups I think. I’ve been out of the house doing things; normal people things, 29-year-old things. Living like a normal person doesn’t always fair well on my body and a few times I pushed it too far and paid the price, but somehow it felt worth it. My soul needed to get out in the world and roll around in the dirt. I felt like Monty when he sees a squirrel and I unhook the leash–caution to the wind, full force ahead. Maybe 50%. I’m often battling this fear that if I’m sick for too long I’ll go to sleep one night and when I wake up thirty years will have gone by and I’ll have barely moved. It’s not always easy but I know it’s important for my soul and my psyche to get out there and try a little. So I do. I did. And I experienced these moments where I felt so intensely alive I could feel it buzzing in my fingertips. And that’s the stuff of life people! The best kind of little reminders.

A while ago I was invited by a friend to attend a three-day meditation retreat in Magnolia, Mississippi. I’d never been on a retreat before and I felt apprehensive at first. For starters, I felt angst about whether my body would hold up through the weekend. Secondly, I had this cliché vision of long-haired hippies dancing naked around a fire, sharing their “truths” or something. But when I learned it was a silent retreat, I knew I had to do it. I don’t know if I’ve made this apparent, but I sort of hate meeting people. I cringe at smalltalk and I find strangers questions difficult and exhausting to answer. I know it’s just part of conventional social norms, but this question of “What do you do?” causes me an intense five-second panic attack, and introductions almost always go there. To give an honest answer comes with this pressure to provide a back-story, which is long and convoluted. I expect strangers have as much interest in hearing these details as I do telling them, and sometimes I feel like rolling my eyes at my own reality. But I haven’t yet figured out a way to give a succinct honest answer that leaves everybody comfortable. I think I’ll start answering ‘waitress’ and save everyone five whole minutes.

So this the idea that we wouldn’t have to talk to other people, including our assigned roommates, totally sold me. But I still felt angst about my health hovering in the background. This is nothing new. I confront this fear all the time making decisions because my health has failed me so many times before when I’ve really counted on it. So I don’t anymore. It’s hard always having to maneuver around this invisible thing in your life that you don’t even like. But this is my reality and hating or fearing it does me no good. So I considered the worse-case scenario; I crash. Even if that were the case and I spent the weekend in bed, what were they going to do? Strap me to a chair and force me to meditate? I figured I’d be OK. So I said yes. And there’s something pretty revitalizing about saying yes to something new, especially when for so long these kinds of opportunities were an automatic no.

I wrote an essay about the weekend and I’ll post that next. I’ll say now my favorite part was eating lunch next to my friend in total silence, only making eye contact every now and then. There’s a lot of space and freedom that opens up when no one feels the need to talk. They call it “noble silence” and I think we could all use a little more of it. It rocked!

After that I was invited on a weekend trip to the beach where I would share a house with 12 other girls. So basically the opposite of the silent retreat. I am a total beach bum and don’t feel I get enough of it, so I went. And it turned out to be a really awesome and fun weekend. I was feeling pretty sick the day we left, but I was also really craving the sand and the air and warm gulf water. (I’m a pansy about water temp) I knew I’d feel better once I got there, so Emily and I drove the three and half hours there and watched the sun set while crossing the Louisiana/Mississippi border. I felt really happy in that moment. The sunset was the kind that changed colors every 10 seconds and was remarkably beautiful over the Louisiana marsh. I tried to capture the spectacle made by all the intense colors, but a picture never does a great sunset justice. It’s like holding a rookie drawing next to a Monet. Maybe it’s better to just pause and enjoy the splendor of a disappearing sun. It’s such a short-lived pleasure anyway. Watching them always make me feel grateful.  We finally arrived and learned that our house was next door to the classiest bar in the South: Florabama. So naturally, we went. Never heard of it? Here’s a peek.

No Pets

…

Every time I visit this bar I am overwhelmed and baffled by it. It’s three stories (possibly more, I don’t know, I’ve gotten lost in it twice), hosts multiple bands on different levels, and is jam-packed with drunk people of every age. Every surface is a proverbial guest book where people under the influence leave their mark for the world to see. I’m always riveted and only sometimes horrified reading the graffiti that adorns literally every surface. I started photographing the funny ones so I could laugh later and have some weird photographic keepsake of the trip. So I took a photo of the surface of the bar we were ordering from.

Damn you, Laken

We couldn’t stop laughing at the idea of some angry person pulling out a marker and deciding to write that Laken Franks sucks Donkey Penis. A while later I entered the Florabama bathroom, where I confronted many, so many more messages, in every color, on every surface, including the toilet seat. I took some more photos because so far no one I met was as interesting as this graffiti of the world. I liked the idea of one picture having the mark of so many strangers, many of whom likely have no memory of the literary gems they left. And now I’d have a piece of it and they’d have no idea about that, either. So what did I find while looking through those photos later? Another sentiment for Laken in the bathroom stall.

Damn you again Laken

Only this time Laken’s a baby murdering whore. I couldn’t believe the name showed up in two photos. Pretty crazy odds given the volume of surface area in that place and the amount of angry messages. I wonder who Laken Franks is and what she (he?) did that left someone upset enough to get creative with their insults and tattoo them on two of the walls of the worlds classiest bar. I shall never know. I’m just glad I was alive enough to be there and capture it. My fingertips were buzzing at little moments like this all weekend. But mostly when I watched the sun rise on the beach at 6 am. There’s something almost holy about a sunrise. It feels like a sneak-peek at reality unfolding–a backstage pass to the universe or something. Anyway, I’ll leave you with that photo, because I was feeling very alive when I took it, and my fingertips still buzz when I look it now. Maybe yours will too.

6 am, alive and well

Health, Happiness, Buzzing

Questions Answered.

Everything is weird. I’m still healthy. And that makes things weird. And also pretty great.

I’m enjoying the three-dimensionality of things. The multitudes of personalities I’m confronting. The sounds that one simply doesn’t here in a bed in Southern Louisiana. Everything is distinctly colorful. Of course the onslaught of spring and the prolific products of hers help. It’s a been a long time since my health has maintained in this way. I’m walking a thin internal line, trying not to delve too hard into the why but not altogether ignoring the possibility of its fleeting nature, just like the season. I’m simultaneously happy at this new disposition and also keeping a dark fear at bay. It could all end quickly– a few things. And being entirely reckless hasn’t served me in the past. So I’m keeping these things in mind of course. But trying not to fall down completely into the rabbit hole where incessant introspective thoughts about it all could trap you just as easy as any sickness could.

For the most part, it’s been fucking great. Sorry. F word only every now and then. But it really is nice being able to stand and walk without the typical interruptions and be social and see comedy and do what other young people are doing. I can’t deny I am simply just enjoying the hell out of all of it. Things feel carefree and almost weightless. Life outside of a window at my house, a window on my phone, is really pretty great. When I get worried about the future or have fear of losing it, my mom tells me the same thing; detach from the outcome. And it’s so, so true.

I’m thinking of so many things these days. I’m still trying to put it together. What purpose will I serve with this newfound health? What did I fulfill in sickness? How to matter and find meaning in all of it– the big stuff and the little stuff and the small bits in-between. I’ve been thinking in questions today. I’m going to write them out with my best shot at answers because it’s just the current of my thoughts lately and I’m not going to swim upstream.

What do you contribute the newfound health to?

It could be the physical therapy for my neck which has lessened that pain load considerably. Could be the prescription switch to Trazadone that has me actually sleeping through the night–never mind the night sweats. Another prescription switch from Neurontin to Lyrica seems to help with pain management in general and maybe the increase in energy. Also it’s Spring and I swear to God I’m always at least a little improved in nice weather and my migraines are less frequent. Also divine intervention. I don’t know. Maybe a little of it all.

What happened to sewing, weren’t you into sewing for a while?

Yeah, I was. And I got really excited about some sewing projects. I sat at the Singer Simple 3116 for hours and taught myself the ins and outs of it. I got carried away and excited with ideas. Then I began, and I jammed the bobbin. THAT DAMN BOBBIN. I took the bobbin apart, unjammed it, and put it back together. And now the bobbin is failing me hardcore. I need bobbin help. Anyone? Still, I’d like to get back to some sewing projects. I find it relaxing and I like learning skills that seem to be fading from my generation.

What’s Monty up to?

You know, same ol…

This.

And this.

…This

Always this.

Followed by this.

Let’s talk about tea now.

Drinking this new acai/blueberry/pomegranate mix on the reg. It’s really good. Has there yet been a decision on the universal pronunciation of acai berry? I hear a mix around town. Let a sister know.

How’s the writing going?

I find a lot of reasons not to, but when I sit down and do it I like what comes out. Most of it’s been happening pen-to-page so I’ve been using up my notebooks, which is good because I have a lot. I’ve been on the lookout for a typewriter, but maybe that’s just another fantasy in the works. This thought that some instrument will encourage more writing instead of the truth which is that real writing just requires sitting down and doing that shit. I’m working on that.

Anything else while you’re out here in Neverland typing to yourself?

Yeah I’m reading like 4 books right now and 1 book of poetry. I don’t think this is how optimal reading was designed, but I find my head a little scattered lately. I’m almost finished with The Rosie Project–really funny, really good. Trying to push through Dance Dance Dance (slower than expected). One Dead in Attic is an easy quick read but dismal of course, you know, post-Katrina stuff. The Four Agreements is sometimes rudimentary in comparison to Tolle and Zukav and Nepo, but almost identical in the message. It’s got good stuff. New American Poetry which is proving what I feared–that I don’t really understand how to read poetry. Do you keep reading until you get it? I guess that’s all in the way of books.

And everything else.

For now the goal is to truly enjoy this time of health, appreciating every second where taking a deep breath is easy and sitting isn’t my only option. I’ve held the door for people these last few weeks. I held the door! These very normal things…they’re feeling very good. Clearly I’ve had a lot of doors held for me in my small life, and it feels nice to return the favor.

One last thing:

I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel. I really liked it. Monsieur Gustave..he sticks with you. I’m still stuck on Moonrise Kingdom though. See them both. Make a whole night of it.

Health, Happiness, HEALTH, HAPPINESS!

 

 

Don’t Forget to Do Nothing.

Two things happen when I start feeling better: My house gets really, down-to-the-baseboards clean, and my writing takes a hiatus.

For whatever reason, the last two weeks have been comparatively healthy ones. My energy is up and my pain level medium and manageable. Like most people with the illness, I couldn’t tell you exactly what’s changed. And if the past is any indicator, I could just as easily land on my ass tomorrow and be in a bed for a week. Of course, I’m not expecting that, and I’m enjoying the hell out of the newfound energy. My mom says it’s obvious when you start feeling better because suddenly you see all these little things that need tending too that you hadn’t noticed before. I’m sure it’s a defense mechanism of the body. You can’t exactly worry about dusty baseboards when your arms are too weak for teeth-brushing.

As I’ve enjoyed this accelerated momentum and stamina, I noticed I was forgetting to write. It’s easy to see why–often the trigger for me to write is either some sort of pain (physical or mental) that leads to enlightenment or offers some lesson, or it’s diverted attention to some very small detail that I usually notice when the pace of my life is slow, ie when I’m sick. It’s not that the requirement for noticing these deeper observations is sickness, it’s that when I am in fact sick, everything slows down. Out of necessity, I don’t really have a choice. The tasks on a to-do list, the chores, the logistics of physical life are put on hold while whatever broken part of me is on the mend. When I’m in this state, it’s almost as if some parts of my brain are turned up while others turn down. Like the static and noise of everyday life are quieted, and in that absence come the more powerful details and ideas. In other words, I’m tuned in to a different frequency. I’m looking for and sometimes finding answers and meaning maybe because it’s a way to feel alive and happy while waiting on my physical body to “catch up”. But I’ve discovered something in the last two weeks that now I’ll be paying attention to:

I shouldn’t have to be sick in order to be tuned in to that frequency.

The modern world is fast. The to-do lists are bottomless. And even when we die there will be unread emails in our in-boxes. This is why that conscious awareness I have while I am sick, the kind that the mystics speak of,  will have to be a choice on my part. (If I am to be well) If the last three years have shown me anything, it’s been the importance of that tuned in consciousness. Of living my life awake, not numbed or on autopilot. These things are easy to forget. Hell, I’ve been healthy a week and half and seemed to have forgotten just as quickly. But it certainly makes me examine the thought that all sick people have– could this be the reason I was sick at all? It’s not a theory anymore, I know with absolute certainty that without illness me and my life would be very, very different. I was a type-A personality; A competitive gymnast to whom school and other things came easy. Would I have ever slowed down? Would I ever have found Wisdom in the Day Lillies or saved the all those baby frogs from the pool everyday while examining the largeness and smallness of life that surrounds me? Would I stop to photograph plants like this just because it struck me as beautiful and that was reason enough for pause?

The Pink!

Well, probably not. And it’s not to say that me noticing the beauty of flowers or the fragility of life is so important or better than what I’d be doing otherwise. But I have to trust in the specific experience I’m having. Things could have been different, but of course, we can’t re-write our pasts. I’ll never know who I would’ve been. On bad days (on unconscious moments)  I fantasize that I would have been better. That my life would be a glamorous one and there would be little suffering and I would be the president blah blah blah. But that kind of thinking is mostly ego of course, and all fantasy. Projecting that all my happiness lies somewhere over there, if only things were different is textbook ego. And all that contributes to is a lack of attention to the present. It takes away my power and ability to see and navigate where I am with what I have. If our power is in the present and it’s indeed all we have like Tolle and his peers suggest, then the “if only” thought doesn’t get us very far. It’s rare that we stop to consider that without illness or without our painful experience, we might have been someone worse. Someone very unlike who we are today. Now when I consider why maybe this illness is a part of my path, it makes a little more sense. It’s what I needed to become awake. And clearly I’m still trying to get there.

Of course maybe you’re a student of the chaos theory, in which case all of this is just randomness unraveling in a one-time deal called life on earth. Some people are sick and other people aren’t. Life is good or life is bad and then you die.  I’ve considered this hypothesis but it just doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t further my vision or deepen my understanding of life and its complexity. In fact it seems to cut off at the very best part–the why. That’s a question I wonder if I’ll ever stop asking. Most of this experience only begins to make sense when I get down to details like a scientist would, and so that’s where my understanding is. Or where it begins. I am still searching for more answers, for more mentors and schools of thought to point me toward them. But I find it hard to accept a conclusion that appears to stop at the tip of the iceberg in terms of depth and understanding of all the elements of life that we cannot see. Love. Suffering. Belief. Surrender. Grief. Grace. Of course maybe I’m wrong in which case we’re all going to die anyway and I’ll never see you again. So, ya know, whateva.

There was only one day in the last week where I felt bad enough to spend the afternoon horizontal. As I write that I’m containing my excitement at how “good” I’ve felt that only one day this week I was on supine. Anyway, that morning I’d caught the eye of a tree frog on my kitchen door. For whatever reason I watched him a while and then took a picture. On my downtime that afternoon I kept thinking of that frog and the surplus of details on his little tiny body. So I wrote- a poem- for the next two hours. I don’t know whether it was good or not and maybe that doesn’t matter. But I do know for whatever reason, it had me feeling good to write it. I noticed then too, I’ve got to slow down. Even when I feel good, let some tasks lie. Let some calls go unanswered. Sit in stillness and quiet and let the questions come. Even if for ten minutes, I always feel better. Lately I’ve caught myself stuck on the guide channel of my TV, incessantly searching for a show that I feel will entertain or gratify me. I play one show in the window but continue to seek the magic program, while ads about Lipitor blare at unconscionable volumes. Suddenly, I’ll hit the power button, and the subsequent silence feels so. incredibly. good. That was the program I was looking for; silence! Life is noisy, and fast, and always non-stop. Sometimes it’s OK to stop and do nothing. Notice what happens in the stillness. It’s as if a whole other world exists right beyond the busy.

Health, Happiness, and Something Beyond the Nothing.

details.

 

I Wanna Get Better

This strange thing keeps happening. This clear salty liquid keeps filling up in my eyes and overflowing down my face. I’ll feel a little overwhelmed and then a sense of loss, like I’m mourning someone. The liquid is an endless spring. I imagine I’ll run out, but I don’t. I have to drink more just to supplement all that salt I’m losing! It’s pretty annoying. I’d like it to stop.

The truth is I become a fragile emotional feather when I’m sick without relief. Gradually, after day and night and day of unrelenting sickness, it just gets to you. It starts to feel like dying more than living. I know that’s a heavy statement, and I use the verb feel very specifically. I am very much alive. Although it does beg the question. At what point do we say someone is “dying?” When their suffering outweighs their relief? That’s another question another day. I am for whatever reason, very alive, although I feel very dead. But dead people don’t cry so I think I can rule that out.

The real reason it’s been so hard recently is that being sick is absolutely and utterly exhausting. It’s overwhelming. And you know what I fantasize about? Being one of the people in my life right now that gets to offer help and suggest improvements and do random kind things. I dream of just being an average person in the functioning world. If you are that person, in anyones life, treasure it. It’s truly a privilege to be able to give to others. I might not have understood that had I never gotten sick. I want to give instead of take take take all the time. I’m tired of relying on help from others and constantly showing gratitude or kissing ass because I’m often helpless, unreliable, or burdensome. I’m tired of being high maintenance. I’m tired of all the pills I take, that work about half the time. Sometimes my stomach turns at the thought of them. I’m tired of being a bad friend in terms of what I am able to offer. I’m tired of what I am made to consider my “social life.” I’m tired of calling in sick to doctor appointments. Of seeing one or two hours of sunlight on bad days. I’m tired of my nightmares and high anxiety dreams every night. You’d think such a weighed down life would find respite in the dreamworld, but nope!! I’m tired of being 29 and relying on my parents as much as I do. Tired of feeling like I have things to offer the world but am too sick and small to carry them out. I couldn’t even hold a part-time job right now. And I’d actually love to. I’m tired of the answer being that there is no answer–there is no cure. I’m tired of being tired. And I know that those I rely on get tired of it too. The effects of all this go beyond me.

I don’t believe in whining and complaining and lamenting about life. Going on that way doesn’t really move us forward. But at the same time, there is pain here, underneath the pain, and if I don’t let it out I fear it will grow and take over my already sick insides. So I have to release it. I thought maybe if I write about it, these episodes of fluid filling up my eyes and clouding my vision and streaming down my face will cease. In other words, I want to stop crying at dog food commercials.

I am someone who loves solitude, thrives off of it even. But lately it feels more like loneliness, which is the third cousin twice removed from solitude. It’s a bad feeling. The difference between the two is that one is chosen and the other feels like the forced, only option. It’s hard to swallow when you’re constantly canceling on plans. And what you’re doing instead of being with friends, is being sick and alone at home. That’s not a fun thing to go through all the time. It wears on you.

I also laugh and cry at myself because I still want to see new places and try new things, meet new people and kiss cute boys. It’s like my heart doesn’t know I’m sick. It never gives up on the idea of new adventures. And then I wonder who would want to date me that has read this blog? I sort of leave my bleeding heart in the words here, and it’s a lot. It probably looks heavy. It can be, like anyones life. I feel vulnerable sometimes knowing that people have read such personal things about me without actually knowing me at all, but it’s part of the project. I told myself I’d always be honest, including when it got ugly. And I feel like it’d be dishonorable to discontinue that just for the sake of vanity. Still though, I worry and wonder if I’m cutting myself off from potential personal relationships by laying it all out there for the world to chew up. I worry where my life will go and how in Gods name I will move forward from here when some days I can’t leave the bed. But our boy Tolle is right: all we have is the present moment. All anyone can do is here and now. And if the present moment has me weak and in bed, (like it does right now) I can’t judge it or myself. This is where I am. I am doing what I’m capable of. Some days are going to look like this:

Not tired of this part.

I see where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve been judging the circumstances of my life which are beyond my control. I’ve been equating my broken body with who I am and my past as the teller of what my whole life will look like. Neither are true. But my circular thoughts would say otherwise, and sometimes we have to observe ourselves beyond our thoughts and feelings–as they are often flat-out wrong. At the same time, this life is just painful and hard sometimes, and I guess it’s OK to type that out loud. Just like I will type out loud when things change and life is better. Everything is temporary.

I also know that goals never hurt anybody. And I plan to make some more specific ones and at least feel  like I am playing a part in my health and happiness. There are small things that I can do and/or avoid that can help. Well, that’s what my mom says, and she is usually right. She’s also planning to give up TV for Lent which sounds great to me. I have a few projects in mind in lieu of the crap we would’ve been watching. Creativity never hurt either. In fact, it’s often where we find relief we didn’t even know we needed.

Also, listen to this song. It’s called I Wanna Get Better by Bleachers and I know the title is almost annoyingly appropriate but it’s a really fun and happy jam. And you can’t have enough of those.

Health and Happiness and Sickness and Sadness :)

Unwell, Unafraid

I know this feeling all too well.

A crash day followed by a crash day followed by a crash day. Somehow it’s worse when you’ve been feeling well.  All the years I’ve been sick, all the crash days and months, and I still can’t remember how bad it feels. It always pulls the rug out from under me–more so if I’ve had good health. Over and over, I forget. How incapacitating it is. How depressing it can get. When you’re moving and doing and performing tasks, you don’t think about these things. You don’t have to. You’re fitting in and alongside the rest of the functioning, productive world and that’s how you like it. It’s the best kind of fitting in. Someone asking you how you are is nothing more than a pleasantry and that’s how I like it. No reason to sugarcoat or think twice about the answer. I’ve yet to figure out a response that feels right, so mostly I lie, and I’m a bad liar. I cave easy. But this is one I get away with. I suppose it’s why anyone lies; it’s just easier. It feels good to give an answer that people want to hear. It keeps a hard reality in the blurry background, and that’s how I like that, too.

On day 4 of my crash, I’m laying on my moms couch in the office. My mom comes in and asks if I am still as weak as I’ve been. I quickly reply ‘no’ and that I’m feeling at least a small bit better. It’s a lie. I can tell because saying it out loud causes some kind of turning in my gut; where the truth would’ve provided solace maybe. I feel just as bad if not worse than yesterday. I’m short of breath for no reason and I’m weak down to my finger tips–peeling my banana earlier was way harder than it should have been. I’m dizzy every time I move. I get waves of nausea that are as close to puking without actually puking as it gets. But I lied. I said I was better. I’m left wondering why I did that. I’ve got some ideas.

Not having to think for very long, the answer came. It’s so easy: I’m afraid. I’m afraid that it could mean what it’s meant before. That it won’t go away. That I could be stuck this way the rest of my life. That I’ll never be able to fulfill all the dreams I have or achieve my notebook full of plans and ideas. I’ve had a one day crash turn into a week turn into 6 months. I’ve watched my life turn inside out and be emptied of the good parts. So often it feels like I’m watching it all happen from the outside. At 26 it felt as though the narrative of my life shifted from 1st person to 3rd, and that’s been hard to get used to. I said goodbye to things I wasn’t ready to. The illness took me over and then swallowed everything in my vicinity too. It was hard. It is hard. Some days, some weeks, some months better than others. It’s just been so “good” the last few months. It seems every time I crash I have to confront everything all over again. I think it will be that way until I fully accept and surrender to what my life might be. I already know the challenges I face, I also know it could be a lot worse. That in the end I have everything I really need. And while my life could be bad like I fear sometimes, it could also be good. great even. And the reason I need to let go of that fear is because what my life can be is up to me. Sick or healthy.

I have to remind myself often that a lot of this is out of my hands, which I have to be very careful with. That kind of acknowledgment requires perspective and reflection and it should never be an excuse. This is surrender, it is not giving up. They are two different animals and mixing them up can heavy the suffering. It doesn’t mean you call it quits and accept that life is shit. I’ve had to draw a lot lines between surrender and giving up and so often I’ve gotten it wrong. I’m ready to start getting it right. Apart from what we’re doing in our lives, the way in which we examine them makes all the difference in its joy or sadness. You’ll know whether you’re surrendering or giving up the same way you’ll know whether you’re telling the truth or not: one feels like relief, the other like defeat. One has roots in reality, the other in fear of it.

I have to stay aware. I have to remain conscious about the choices I am still free to make, and remember that I do still play a part in all this. Of course there are many parts of my life I would change were I able. But how I go about living the rest of my days is in fact up to me. Actually, it is only up to me. Will I choose to react? Will I choose to be a victim? Will I make excuses for myself to justify poor decisions? All of these are possible. And every day I wake up I can think of 100 reasons to choose a darker path. To stew in my own sorrow, to stop trying, to be defeated by something difficult, as if no one else alive is faced with their own challenges. Some that make mine look like a splinter in my pinky. The opportunity to go another route will always be there. You’ll get in trouble thinking that if you choose one good thing, you won’t be tempted by so many other bad ones. You will be. Everyone is, in their own way. Every person has demons to manage and a truth that isn’t easy to sit with in silence, but truthfully this is half of being alive. It’s why you’re a human being and not a turtle in the mud or an insect reacting to stimuli; flying toward whatever is bright.

The funny thing is, what most humans want is control. We like to think we make our own lives and everything is up to us. I disagree with that notion on a few levels and agree with it on others. I know for certain we play a huge hand in our own happiness. But when we get dealt things we didn’t plan for or wouldn’t have picked we feel like we’ve been royally screwed. Robbed. So often I fail to realize it’s not about choosing my hand but how I play the one I got. That has been and always will be up to us.We get to choose how we talk to people and who we surround ourselves with and what we’re going to give our precious energy to each day. What mark will we leave? What will we contribute to the world we’ve been given? Scientists and theologians continue to debate whether we chose to come here or not. Regardless of whether we’re the product of an all-knowing creator or consciousness or the random assimilation of atoms and space, we know for certain our time here is temporary. Loving or hating our life won’t change whether it ends or not. It will end. We don’t get to stay forever. We don’t get a say so in some of the things that were done to us. Every adult has a childhood. Every child had parts that weren’t fair or right. At one time or another, we’ll question every truth we’ve held onto and every drop of optimism we’ve carried. At times we’ll have to fight for our purpose, even if it’s just to get out of bed and make yourself eggs. (That was mine today. Yeah!) We get to choose what we do next with what we have. Will I find a reason to be happy or a reason to be mad? Because I will find both. I can always find both.

I have plenty of reasons to be both. But the last thing I need is to be afraid of what is real. Even if what is real is scary. Life is scary stuff dude. Have you been outside lately?! Even in small doses. Sometimes I have to chop it up smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s digestible enough for me to get out of bed and face the world and find my path and keep going. Doesn’t matter that I know where, so long as it’s forward. The truth moves us forward where lies keep us in the past. Surrender smooths the road for us to navigate with eyes anew, where giving up halts us, traps us in static pause.

I have no idea why even small truths are important, maybe for the reason that even small lies can cause damage. My small truth is that today is the 5th day in a row I feel terrible, and I live in fear that I won’t emerge from it. That the illness has the steering wheel and I’m passenger side. I fear what all the pills I take is doing to my insides. I fear I’ll live with my parents forever. (Sometimes I think they fear it too :) And all of these things are O.K. There’s no need for me to sugarcoat it, lie about it, or fall dramatically somber in acknowledging it. In fact admitting the fear almost instantaneously makes it smaller. Takes away a little of its power.  Today I’m unwell, but I’m also unafraid. I expect to get better. Being quiet and afraid won’t rid me of what I fear. So perhaps better to be loud and honest. Life will go on regardless. What I want to be assured of, and what I imagine so many of us want to be assured of, is that we tried. That we didn’t take being alive lightly. I know I don’t live all of my days like that, and that’s a change I’m working on. Imagine if we could all live in our truth, whatever it is, and embrace each day as though we’d never lost. What might our world look like then? Our lives? Our Facebook Statuses?!

This has all stemmed from one small lie I told one afternoon that followed me around all night and morning. Funny that me confronting a grand truth began with a dumb little lie. But something about it makes me feel in my bones that these things matter. Sometimes I see and feel in myself and others that we’re starving for things that matter but are constantly being fed things that don’t. I don’t know how to begin a shift, but I know to make changes on a big scale, we must first begin with ourselves and live honestly. It’s our job to dig deep within, listen to our intuition, and be human for one another, not at one another.

I’m still tying all of my thoughts together. Still looking for answers and often coming up short. Sometimes I can feel the strings of my reality ever so slowly weaving together and making something whole from many mismatched parts. That’s what so many days feel like. Raking through the muck and finding the good parts. Then making sense out of the bad stuff left behind. The fear and pain and anger, there’s a lot of answers in them.

I’m sharing this beginning with anyone reading. (All six of you)  Maybe somehow, it’s something we all work towards together. And whether this is just a stepping stone or a small premise for something bigger, it doesn’t matter. This can be the start of something new, even if it’s very very small. And I can look back at this oddly cold day in January, where besides the frozen leaves outside, it would have been business as usual. But it wasn’t. It isn’t. Where a small lie would have left me afraid, a tiny truth burrowed out instead. And in my repetitive life, maybe this is the start of something new.

Health, Happiness, and I Ain’t Scurred

Just Kidding I’m Still Scared

The Paris Promise.

Have you ever promised yourself a gift? Something unnecessary, something perhaps even excessive, but something just for you, from you?

When I was 22, I left America to study a spring semester in France. I had always been drawn to Paris– the French, the language, the lifestyle–but I could never pinpoint why. I just felt I needed to go one day. I became so philosophical about wanting to go there and not understanding what was fueling my desire that finally I called my brother Nick in a strange self-induced panic. “I want to study a semester in France.” “Great!” he responded. “But I have no idea why!” A pause. “Who cares?”

It was my freshman year, and I often called Nick with my college-born troubles. I remember him telling me with such sincerity, “Mary, don’t think to hard about it. You want to study in France, so study in France! You’ll know why once you get there.” He was correct. Three and a half years and a crap-ton of paperwork later, I packed two ridiculously sized suitcases and prepared for life abroad.

Technically, the timing couldn’t have been worse. I felt very troubled leaving. It had been one of the hardest years of my mom and I’s life. Just less than a year earlier my step-dad died suddenly, and everything sort of stopped. None of us were prepared for that. As if that wasn’t hard enough, a few months later my black lab Brusky, who had just turned one year old, developed an infection and also died suddenly. Brusky was one of the only positive things my mom and I could count on that year. When things became intense or overwhelming or sad, he’d always do something to make us laugh. He was truly a wonderful dog. He was my sunshine. And when he died that morning, I really felt forgotten. There was an empty feeling of chaos inside. I watched the world spin on but I felt stuck standing still. I was jealous of happy people. I was doubtful for our future. And I was losing faith that we could ever be happy again. It was partially the reason I went to France. At that point it felt like I didn’t have a lot to lose.

But I was the last kid left in Louisiana. Most weekends I drove home from school to be with my mom. There are so many logistical things to tend to after someone dies. Just cancelling his cell phone with AT&T took months and months. My mom always told me to stay at school. That I didn’t need to come home and that she’d be fine. But when you see a parent lose someone they love, you see a piece of them go too. She’s tough, and she rarely reaches out for help. And that was mostly the reason I went– so she wouldn’t have to. When I received the acceptance letter to a university in a small town in France called Besançon, I was immediately excited and then immediately distraught. How could I leave my mom at such a pivotal time? She insisted I go. Insisted she’d be fine. The last thing she wanted was for Roger’s death to hinder us. I grappled with the idea of staying and the idea of going.  Finally it felt like I had to go. If I stopped exploring, learning, living, loving, trying, then I’d have let fear and doubt and melancholy take over. We had to keep living, both of us, and maybe while I was gone, something wonderful could happen to her too. It didn’t make our goodbye at the airport any less sad. I held it together as best as I could, but still I felt the fear and the doubt and sadness right there on the surface. We hugged goodbye and I prayed all the way to Paris. It was the only thing I could do to keep my confidence alive in a decision that I wasn’t outwardly sure about.

Once in France, my brothers words rang true. Meeting amazing people who are still incredibly close friends. Watching the first snow fall. Cafe au lait and croissants and vin chaud and ridiculous business hours and cafes and little French children. It was perfect. All of it. I fell in love. With the country, with a boy, with my friends, and my life there. “This is why,” I thought. I’d found my answer. Something in my soul must have known I’d find happiness there, at a time where I’d forgotten what happiness even looked like. I lived in a space maybe half the size of my bedroom now with a twin bed and a desk, and I have never been happier. Best of all, I felt vibrantly alive for the first time in a long time.

Happy, oui.

Not only that, but while I was gone, my mom said yes to a coffee date, with extreme hesitance.  A friend convinced her it was only coffee and so she went. The coffee date turned into a dinner date. Which turned into an every meal date, and falling in love and happily ever after. Would that have happened if I would’ve stayed? We’ll never know, but I’ll always wonder.

When leaving after an adventure like that, you make a lot of promises. You think you’ll go back. You think you’ll stay in touch with everyone. You’ll carry on traditions. But these are more optimistic than realistic. The real world resumes on when you return. (It’s awful!) Although I made two best friends there, one of which is My Stupid Friend Jess, very few of us stay in real touch. We reminisce. We get sad when we think about the fact that if we all went back now, it wouldn’t be the same. Our experience was wonderful, carefree, spontaneous– but impossible to repeat. It was five and a half months of not living in the real world as we know it. School was very easy, teachers were lax. They encouraged you to immerse yourself in any and everything, and if that meant missing class, pas de probleme! I loved it. It was truly perfect.

But I did make one promise that I have always intended to keep. I promised myself that I’d return to Paris and celebrate my 30th birthday there. I’ve thought about this promise throughout the years, and I think over the last two years I’d sort of lost hope and resorted to the idea that Paris wouldn’t happen. But when I turned 29 this year, that promise seemed to reignite inside me. I realized it’s only impossible if I say it is. I have a year to make this wish come true. I have no idea why I made the promise for my 30th birthday. I probably assumed I’d be wealthy and successful by then. Hahaha!!! Life is funny.

So I’m not exactly wealthy and successful (yet) but I still have 10 1/2 months until my 30th. A lot can happen in that amount of time. I know that work is required of me. I know there is a way for me to have this illness but still contribute in a meaningful way and support myself and Monty and pay back all the debts I’ve incurred along the way! I truly think it’s possible. I constantly see items on TV or in magazines and think ah, when I’m a millionaire, I’ll totally have a temperpedic mattress and my own jet for travel so I’m not subjected to modern commercial air travel. They are fantasies, sure, but something tells me they could really happen. It’s not like this type of success doesn’t exist. It’s not impossible! It’s just going to require getting creative. Most people don’t make millions from bed, but it’s not that far off the radar. I mean the Kardashians did it!

Anyway, I don’t have the money yet but I haven’t aggressively tried to get it. I’ll need to strategize. And maybe I won’t be in great health, and it will be different than last time and I won’t be able to walk the city as freely. But I’m going to turn 30 no matter what. Here or there. And if I’m sick here, why not be sick there? I don’t mind being sick in Paris! And if it’s just me, alone on a terrace, watching the Eiffel from afar, that’s great too. As long as I am choosing life, and honoring my passions and keeping my dreams alive and not stifled, I don’t think I can really go wrong. I don’t know how this is all going to fall in place, but somewhere deep, someplace where I once felt that initial drive to go and didn’t know why, I feel that it will happen. And if I keep letting the illness infringe on every dream, I’ll never get anywhere. Things will stay the same. And  once you stop dreaming, what is the point really? This was a promise I made to myself. Not for a boy, not to prove anything, just a gift I promised to my soul. Last time I left, it was a troubling time and I was uncertain, but once I arrived it all made sense. It appears to be that way again.

The only question left to ask? WHO’S WITH ME?!   :)

La Santé, Le Bonheur, et La Promesse

 

Tired Writer Fighter.

It’s raining. And whenever it rains it feels easier to write. So I’m forcing myself to sit down, because lately, the words haven’t come as easy. I have this recurring nightmare type of thing, although it doesn’t come at night–it’s more a dull anxiety beyond the curtain in my brain- that one day I’ll wake up, and have nothing left to say. Nothing left to write. None of my ideas will be new. Whatever creative juices that used to run through me will have all run dry and I’ll be sitting there, blank pages in front of me, and have nothing. left. to say. Luckily, that day is not today. I have some stuff to say I guess.

The funny thing about my little recurring nightmare, is that ironically, the only way to avoid it is to keep on writing. The longer I go without doing it, the harder it becomes. Sometimes I cringe at what I’ve written, and I’ve deleted entire pages of text that just didn’t seem to “do it” for me. But this is my art form and I care about it. It isn’t really a hobby I do on the side anymore. It is my principal work for now and once you’ve come to care this much about what you do, you really have to nurture it or it will fade. Like a marriage of sorts, or any relationship at that. The interesting part of it is that continuing to produce only gives way to more creativity and newer ideas. Not the other way around. It’s not some finite jar you reach the bottom of. My nightmare is possible I suppose, but more likely from me having abandoned the work, not from literally running out of ideas.  If the universe is infinite than it’s true, our ideas can’t run dry.

I have to remind myself pretty regularly that whether the words come easy or hard, to just keep going. If you give in, well then what kind of a writer are you? I think beyond your final product, being an artist is in the way you live and in how much you give of yourself. Not just when inspiration comes but also when it doesn’t. There is debate in the literary world on whether or not writers block actually exists. I can say that without a doubt, there are times when it’s easy and times when it’s alarmingly difficult, but I think the point is that you just keep plugging away. It was Picasso who said that inspiration exists, but it has to find you working first. You can reject entire pages later if you need to, and there’s no harm in discerning good work from bad work even if a great majority of it is bad. It’s nothing you can hurry or fake or force. You just have to keep working humbly and the right words always find their way out. Think of Michelangelo sculpting his masterpieces like David. He said it was his job to carve away the excess, chip away at everything that wasn’t David until David emerged.

I know that the worst I can do now is let a gift pass me by. In stillness I know that being capable of writing is not something I own but something that was given to me. And I feel that by not putting it to use is letting someone down somewhere. I fight lethargy. I fight distraction. I fight excuses. It’s been a while since I’ve really sat down and put my words to use. And I have to remind myself everyday that very easily I can let all this slip by me. It takes commitment and participation on my end and sometimes I actually have to talk to myself out loud and force myself to move things through me. I do this because it’s not about me. It’s about something bigger and longer-lasting than me. And I don’t know what that is yet. But I know I have to keep at it. And I guess on this rainy Thursday, I am being reminded in more ways than one to keep going. Keep writing. And someday the pieces of it all will begin to make sense. Carl Jung said the details of his life would only make sense in the context of the centuries. Maybe that’s the ticket.

Health, Happiness, Work.

Life In My Parents Pool House

So if I die I want that to be the name of my memoir. Isn’t is perfect? It’s funny yet sadly true. A sick girl-turned-woman living in her parents pool house and on their dime. With a dog. Wait am I a girl or a woman? Now I know how Britney Spears felt when she sang that song. In any case, it sounds like a Fairytale to me. I wonder how this one ends.

What I’m really getting at is that life in my parent’s pool house is great and I recommend that all 28 year olds or young adults in general try it. I had my first night in my new place three days ago. Waking up the next morning in my bed, in my own house was basically spectacular. You have to understand it’s been 2.3 years since I’ve been able to wake up under those parameters and having to wait so long and go through what I did has made the moment even sweeter. If felt like finally exhaling after a ridiculously long tunnel. I laid in bed for the next hour with a pure feeling of gratitude, and that’s all I can really do in these instances. Breath, reflect, take it in and give thanks. If you don’t they pass you by, and you find yourself years later realizing how good you had it only in retrospect. I realize how lucky I am to live in a beautiful house, to call it my own, to have a pool, and to be given help and time to heal, when my givers know I can’t really pay it back. I guess that’s what you call love isn’t it. Did I mention Monty loves it too? He’s also deathly afraid of the polaris but not enough to stay out of the pool.

Evil Polaris EVIL POLARIS

Moving into a house when you’re a sickly takes a very long time. Also having this month-long headache still isn’t helping, but who’s counting? I was overeager in the beginning. I wanted to set up every room and unpack every box and start painting walls all on the first day. It took a little overdoing and paying the price later to realize OK, this needs to happen one room at a time. Sometimes one piece of furniture at a time. And mostly one drawer at a time. It’s ridiculous to me how many times I have to learn that lesson. That overdoing it will be costly and painful, and yet I continue to overdo it and pay the price. And the funny thing is, most people I speak to with this illness (like my mom and everyone at the support group) say they do it constantly. You’d think we’d learn after all these years. We’re a bunch of stubborn dum dums!

Anyway I think the most exceptional part about living by yourself is the amount of time you can spend without pants. Like that first day, after I spent the hour of gratitude in bed, I got dressed and began unpacking and organizing and having these grand fantasies in my head like “And in this room I’ll have scrabble tournaments and in this room I’ll serve afternoon tea.” All of which will probably never happen. After a while my pants were really beginning to bother me. Don’t ask why–sometimes it’s noises and sometimes it’s clothing. And then it struck me that I could take my pants off and keep unpacking because THIS WAS MY HOUSE and at my house PANTS ARE NOT REQUIRED. So I took them off and unpacked in my underwear and soaked up the amazing feeling of being able to do what I want in my own place because I make the rules now. Yeah! Other rules include:

1. No Bill O’Reilly (Not even an option because I’m poor and don’t have cable but still)
2. Peeing in the Pool Is Actually Allowed. I know you’re going to do it anyway and come on, we use strong chemicals in there.
3. No guns.
4. All dogs allowed! In fact, no humans without dogs.
5. What happens at the pool house stays at the pool house. Like swimming. And scrabble.

So basically, there are no rules. I just want it to be a happy place and an open door to the people I love. I can’t guarantee I’ll be wearing pants, but hey the world has bigger fish to fry. This other cool thing happened while I was touching up paint the first day. I found my ipod from like 5 years ago and thought I’d play songs on random and be entertained from my 5-year-old playlists. The first song that came on was “Let It Be” by The Beatles and I totally stopped what I was doing and belted that song as loud as I could. I’ve heard it so many times before, but suddenly all the words felt like they were being sung just to me and my life. The lyric that really spoke to me was There Will Be An Answer. Because there will be. One day. Maybe not for many many years, maybe not even in this life on earth, but we will see what our lives mean in the grander scheme of things and we will get an answer to our pain and sorrow. I dream about that moment of clarity and revelation all the time. In the meantime, we just have to hang on. Pick up the pieces. Keep going.

Anyway, I played that song about 6 more times really really loudly and sang it really really loudly because that’s another rule: You can sing as loud as you want. Standing in the kitchen. In your underwear. In fact I recommend that’s how you do it. So below is the song Let It Be and I suggest you play it and belt it and let those words remind you that everything is OK. Even though, I know it’s not. My life is a mess. The world is a mess. I watch the news and I see it. I see war and poverty and violence and corruption and it all makes me feel very small. Very powerless. All I am is a sick kid who calls it a success if I take a shower frequently enough. But it reminds me of a quote from Joseph Campbell. He says:

“When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”

It’s not the most romantic theory about life, but it can be reassuring. When I think about what the world has evolved from, (think even from the Civil Rights Movement to present day) it gives me hope that we will continue to grow. It’s all going to be OK. We’re here. We’re awakening. We’ve survived this much, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

Health, Happiness, Pants.

Back To New Orleans.

Excuse the drabness of this post, I’m on day 10 of a headache and sometimes it makes the words come out funny. Or boring. But the show must go on! Anyway, I have some news. I’m pregnant. Just kidding. I just keep dreaming that I am. It’s pretty stressful. Because in the dreams I’m like wait, I take waaay too many pills to effectively grow a fetus inside of me. The rest of the dream is spent in panic mode wondering how to be this sick and how also to care for a child. Sick girl fairy tales! So, the real news.

First, I’m back in New Orleans. Monty and I both are. In fact I’m writing from a courtyard at a friend’s apartment in the French Quarter now. It’s weird to think I’ve been gone for nearly nine months. I don’t know if that’s a thing about the South or a thing about Home, but it never truly feels you’ve been away for as long as you have. As soon as the humidity grabs you at Louis Armstrong Airport, you pick up right wherever you left off. Changed or unchanged.

My original plan was to just spend the spring here. New Orleans has about the shittiest climate of any American city, but April and October are magic. It’s perfect. And when you’re here on a day like today, you wonder why anyone would ever ever leave the place. Plenty of artists have depicted the perfection of this city a million ways better than and before me, so I hesitate to try. I can only describe it as magic on days like this. Of course outside those couple of months, is a city ill-equipped for a few weeks of penetrating cold, followed by relentlessly rainy or relentlessly hot or relentlessly both. In those times it’s easy to see why people would leave. And yet few seem to. The roots here are deep, and I love how many love stories there are between person and place. I’ve lived in different cities over the years and have more than one place to call home, but there is reserved a very special spot for New Orleans. It’s like that boyfriend you never quite get over.

The original plan was to come for my friend’s wedding and spend a month reacquainting myself with the city I’ve been missing. But in February my parents made me an offer. They knew how hard it had been for me to give up having my own place two years ago. Beyond not having the money to afford my own place, I don’t really have the health to live on my own either. It’s a chunk out of the ego to come to terms with things like that. My mom was constantly driving over to pick me up and bring me home. It’s long been a difficult truth for me to accept that I can’t live on my own. I have always loved solitude, and basically since moving out of my apartment that March a few years ago, I haven’t been able to really find it. That all changed in February when my parents told me they were willing to let me and Monty move into their pool house. Because that’s what all mature 28 year olds do; they live in their parents pool house. My mom explained that this way, at times when I’m too sick to be on my own, they’ll be on the property to help. And for the rest of the time, I’ll have a place to call all mine. 

Since that morning, even the thought of their offer has brought me ease. One of the hardest feelings in the world is, in a word: stuck. Stuck with somebody. With something. In someones house. Stuck in a crap situation. One where you don’t see an out. I have confronted this feeling many times and it can feel crushing. It’s often just the wrong set of eyes to be looking at a situation. Many times when we feel stuck we’re not always seeing the whole picture, or the truth of what we’re surrounded with. But I must admit, the feeling has pervaded over and over and I think it stems from a lack of options and a lack of power on my part. When you don’t have health and you don’t have money, you’re not left with much to offer the world. You’re sort of just relying on the pure heart of people around you, because if I’m honest, for everything they do for me, I have little to offer in return. And that has been the truth of my situation for a few years now. So many times–relying on the goodness of people to do things for me, knowing full well I most likely won’t be able to pay back the favor, or the funds, or a house. It’s been a lesson in humility to say the least. How does that quote go? The true character of a man can be measured by how he treats someone who can do him no good. Something like that. I think of those words all the time. I watch people endlessly help to make sure my needs are met, and all I can do is go to bed at night with an immense sense of gratitude and no certainty that I’ll ever be capable of repaying the favor. I promise myself and the universe, if I’m ever well again and if I ever have money, I will use them both graciously for good.

Tomorrow I’ll start the move into my new place and fantasize about all the wonderful things that may happen to me and my life when I’m in it. Maybe it’s the house where I get better. Where all my wildest dreams come true. Where I find my happy ending. Maybe it’ll just be a nice place to write and lay around and be sick. Go my own pace. Either way, it has a pool, so Monty will be happy, and that will make me happy. I also really enjoy being under water, so there’s that too. I’ve got some projects in mind to begin working on now that I have some space to carry them out in, so at least there will be time and room for all the ideas I’ve been scribbling around in my library of notebooks. Before I go, I’ll leave you with a few photographs of the magic city in Springtime. Everyone needs a pretty day in New Orleans. It does the soul some good.

Health, Happiness, Home.

New Orleans Wedding.

Nola Windows. They’re the best.

Life In Color.

Eating crawfish. Once you know, you know.

Dog Spelled Backwards

 

Help. I’ve fallen. And I can’t get up.

I have basically been crashed since the day after Christmas. Even before Christmas, my operational value was at maybe 40%. It has steadily gone down. My joints have become cloudier, my muscles weaker and heavier, noise louder than ever, and ordinary light offensively bright. Simply stated, moving has become difficult again, and this is the hardest symptom of all for me to handle. It’s suffocating. I’d prefer pain honestly. My legs are useless. Sometimes I find myself reaching for things across the bed without so much as flinching my legs because it takes an unwarranted amount of energy to move them. I can’t say what is happening to me. Or what has happened to me. I know that every night I pray really really hard that the next day will be better. When I wake up the next morning, and things are the same or worse, I keep going. I take my daily pill cocktail, wait for relief, stare out of windows, and contemplate what a strange and sedentary existence I have. What else can I do but go on? It’s hard. It hurts. When I think about how long it’s been, I fear how long it could last. But I’m not giving up now. I can see the appeal, but I’m not gonna do it.

 

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome doesn’t kill you, directly. It’s rate of mortality comes from a scary little thing called suicide, and having suffered with this since age 9, it’s easy for me to see why that option can feel like it’s all you’ve got. It doesn’t feel like much of a life, laying in bed each day. Only hearing the sounds of life but not actually participating in them. It’s like smelling the aroma of baking bread and never actually getting to eat any. You watch entire seasons change, babies turn into toddlers, this Christmas into next Christmas, and you expected things to be different by now. You’d fantasized a certain life for yourself by the time you got to 25. And when that didn’t happen you said 26. And then 27. And now 28. I’m starting to forget the numbers. They’ve never changed anything before.

It’s really hard to understand God during these times. I grew up Catholic and have always had my relationship with God- but it’s very personal. I even imagine him when I speak to him, in a very specific location, as if a bulleted address on Google Maps. I think of him now, through darker and unhappy times and I think either he trusts me too much, or he forgot about me altogether. But would the master of the Universe forget about someone? So much goes into making a person and a life. I know that I am an incredibly tiny tiny piece of the whole, but still, a piece. And while in the context of eternity and potentially multiple universes we can feel incredibly small, I somehow don’t doubt for a second that my life matters, and so does everyone’s who is alive. I don’t say that with a lot of pride either. I say it because there is something solid and untouchable in me, something unstirred by discouragement, failure, despair, loneliness and tears. It says Keep Going, and so I do. But the truth is I don’t know what for and I don’t even know in what direction. Certainly I am lost. But it’s sort of for my own bitter curiosity that I won’t give up. I want to see what’s at the finish line waiting. I need to know this is not all for nothing.

I must be honest, I think a lot about how stupid I think my life is. I know that seems irreverent at best, but sometimes you just have to laugh about it. Today I was too fatigued to brush my teeth. My God! It’s so stupid! It’s so stupid it’s funny. You should see what I look like these days. Somewhere between Jim Carrey when he visits the Nut House in Ace Ventura wearing brown boots and a pink tutu, and an old senile man in pajamas on his front porch with a cigarette and a shot-gun. Sometimes I stare at myself in the mirror, not quite recognizing what I’ve morphed into. The steroids have puffed my face, my skin is pale and there are dark circles I never had until now. But more than that, it’s like the lights are out. What’s that phrase? A shell of who I used to be? Something like that. I feel like a caged animal and I fear that’s what I’m starting to look like too.

 

Thanks for the clothes Grandpa!

Tonight I cried I guess because it all catches up to me once and a while and feels too heavy to keep in. My mom says we’re all due for a little meltdown now and then. I cried but what I wanted to do was scream, because I am physically nauseous from how sick I’ve been. How relentless it’s been. Day after day, hour after hour. When the weakness makes just standing up a chore that takes energy, my stomach turns. I’m tired of being sick and I’m tired of taking pills. I want to scream but I don’t have the energy for it, so I cry. By default.

 

When I cry I blow my nose really loud, hoping that it’ll wake God up from his sleep. I hear a rustling and when I look up, it’s Monty standing there, wagging his tail at me. He’d snuck in when my head was buried in my hands. Truthfully, I was happy to see him. It then occurred to me that Dog is just God spelled backwards…so maybe he is listening after all. Maybe Monty is God! I don’t know. And that’s the hardest part about moments and times like these. We don’t see how they fit into the grand design of our lives yet. All we see is what’s happening now. For now, there’s pain and suffering, and if God reads blogs, then I guess this is me asking him to take it a little easy. Maybe just for a day. Either way, I will still go to sleep with hope that tomorrow might be better. And if it isn’t, then the next day, or the next day or the next. Keep going something tells me, and since I have nothing else to do, I guess I’ll do that.

Health and Happiness and Keep On Keepin On.

 

A List of Mildly Pleasing Things.

The sound a rotary phone makes
When you hang up the receiver.

The smell of tires
And how you know before you walk in
the door of the auto shop
that the computer will be old,
and the colors will be red and black.

The sound of ice in a glass
And a something liquid gold
pouring slowly in.

When Monty’s Tail Wags While He’s Sleeping.

Riding in a cab
In New York City,
going anywhere.
The urban slideshow
through a square cracked window
slows down the fast city.
and the driver mumbling
in a quiet language an American girl
who’s pretty
will never need to know.

The way Gwyneth Paltrow smokes cigarettes in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

.

The second of stillness
When you drive under a bridge in the rain.

New showering products.

A woman tying a man’s tie.

The crinkling of a newspaper
When a man eats his breakfast
With one leg crossed over the other.

Being a woman
Wearing a dress
Smelling romantic
and the clicking of heels
on the old wooden floor
toward whoever spent the time waiting.

A fresh piece of chalk
on school chalkboards.
And the slowness and fragility
of that 90 year old librarian
Who stamps the due date in my book
with her veiny tissue hands.

That feeling you get
When you kiss someone new.
Like everything is different
Though everything’s the same.

Health, Happiness, and Tiny Little Pleasures.

The Day I Tried to Punch a Fly in the Face.

I could tell you a lot of things about my life right now. That once again it’s 4 am and I can’t sleep. That once again Monty has gas but I love him too much to kick him out of the room. That the Chinese doctor told me not to take my pills today and so I haven’t. I feel the effects of it. I have some fear about it. Some hesitation. But I have the same fear of a life dependent on pills, so either way it’s fighting demons. I don’t mind being awake when the world is sleeping. So many days I’ve missed out. Slept through. Called in sick. Night is my time to take life back. I could tell you my music of choice at night when I can’t sleep–lately it’s Tchaikovsky (Swan Lake) but tonight it is Radiohead (In Rainbows) and I’m deciding whether to keep squinting hard and trying to force sleep or to give up. Give in. But since the only cure for insomnia I have found is waking up, I give in.

When I open my computer to begin, a fly immediately lands on the screen, undoubtedly drawn to the light of the monitor. When I scroll the little mouse arrow under him, he jumps. Flies away a second. Then he comes back. I play “tag” with my computer mouse and a fly for probably way too long and smile at this activity. What makes me smile more is that we have this big joke in my family that my dad would be reincarnated as a fly. He used to do this hilarious impression (often at fancy dinners, with no shame) of a fly, rubbing it’s little legs together the way they do. Half of the people laughed because it was funny and the other half probably laughed out of discomfort or something. He was such a nerd. This was his dinner entertainment. I wonder if this fly I am playing computer mouse tag with is my dad. Then it starts rubbing its spidery little legs together the way my dad used to when impersonating them and I smile bigger. Because these are strange anecdotes at 4:14 in the morning and I’d prefer to be getting sleep. But then again I would have missed the fly. The fly and all its mystery.

The Fly.

There are a lot of fly stories concerning my deceased father. Like at his funeral when my sister started crying and one landed on her shoulder. Most people would call these things silly, coincidental, random or meaningless. And that for sure is the easier belief. Faith requires energy. But it almost seems like doubt steals it. Sometimes it appears more attractive to trust nothing and be skeptical of it all. But there are incredibly real moments in my life, where explanation just doesn’t work. It’s beyond science. It’s beyond religion. It’s more along the lines of intuition, instinct, and of course, an awakened state of consciousness. It is really amazing what we can see and access when we are awake. But I think we’re mostly sleeping.

In early September I was  beginning to really resent my situation. I was physically feeling worse and worse. Everyday activities were becoming harder and I was having to rely on people more than ever. I was beginning to resent the fact that I needed help, which is, insane. I should have been thanking every star in the sky that I had help, but I was too busy being upset that my life didn’t look like what I wanted it to. I was really irritable one day. I was short with everyone. I felt angry, sad, and misunderstood. I needed help but I didn’t want to ask for it, so I resented those who tried. Fed up over something stupid, I took Monty on a walk. We walked up “the hill” that presumably was what put me over the edge after walking up it once a day for a week and then facing a monumental crash. Anyway, at the top of the hill was wide open space for Monty to run and for me to think or yell or curse. On that day I let Monty run while I unloaded some words at the universe. I cursed and yelled because no one could hear me. Except maybe some cars that drove by slowly, and at least they had a story to tell later. (Yeah this girl was flipping off the sky and cursing about fibro-vagina or something?) Pretty soon, this fly landed on my face. I swatted it away and it immediately landed back on my nose. Again I swatted. Again, it returned. I was in such an aggravated state, I wanted to punch the fly in the face. I remember thinking those exact words: I want to punch this fly in the face. When I say the fly would not leave me alone, I mean it. For at least five minutes I let Monty run, let my tears fall, and relentlessly swatted away this fly while also trying to punch it in the face. As if that’s even possible. Fed up, I told Monty that due to a CERTAIN INSECT THAT WILL NOT LEAVE ME ALONE, we had to walk home. Monty looked at me like the psycho that I was, and then we started back down the hill. The fly followed.

I started to cry. All I wanted was peace. I was so upset and felt so alone. My life felt out of my hands and I had become completely reliant on others. I’m always the guest on someone else’s couch. When will I sleep on my own couch? I’m always going to be sick and helpless. These were the thoughts that were circulating. As you can see, they are pretty negative. They weren’t helping me. They were the cyclical mental thoughts that dig you deeper in the hole. The fly continued to dart at my face and I continued to flail my arms in what I think were actual attempts at punching it in the face or more simply, just killing it altogether. But to passers-bye, dear God, I must have looked insane. Finally, near our complex I began to calm down. It finally occurred to me; our little joke about my dad returning to earth as a fly. As I remembered I yelled “Seriously dad this is NOT the time!” So now I was punching the air and talking to a fly which I was beginning to believe was my dead father. Want to be friends?

The truth is, that was the time that I needed to be bombarded. The most effective thing that fly did was make me stop. And examine. And get to the truth of my experience. I had been feeling so alone. But the truth was I had love from all sides. I had family to carry me when I couldn’t do it on my own. It was just time for me to humbly accept that not everything was going to be on my terms, and that’s OK. You can still be happy down another path. Once you stop fighting it. That fly relentlessly flew at my face for at least 10 minutes, while I relentlessly tried to kill it. But by the end it had gotten through. Something told me, something from inside, that fly was a reminder. That life wasn’t over. That I wasn’t alone. That I shouldn’t be so irreverent about living. I was still here. Still breathing. And so I still had purpose.

I approached our front door, now smiling at the events of the last 15 minutes. I had tapped into a different energy. A better energy. All thanks to that really, persistent,  annoying fly. Whoever he may be.

Health, Happiness, The Fly.

The Importance of Catching Balls.

The other day I didn’t have a lot of energy (shocker) but Monty did (shocker).  I was throwing the ball for him inside the living room and noting what an expert catcher he is. Like the dude jumps crazy high and catches basically every ball I throw. So I started recording him. Because I have time to do crap like that. Then it was such a beautiful day outside I said screw it, if I can throw a ball in here I can do it outside too. So I brought him outside and recorded all the different ways in which Monty catches a ball. Then I made a movie out of it and put it to some fun music because video editing is another one of those things you can do from bed, and again, I have time to do crap like that. Woo woo. So, below is the result. I guess I realize that Monty makes me happy in so many ways and even watching him jump to catch a ball makes me laugh. Now we all get to watch him. And the angels rejoiced.

Health, Happiness, Monty

*Note, you can’t currently watch this video on a mobile device like your phone because of a third-party licensing issue with youtube…Booo, I know. I’m working on it.

You Can Make Your Own Cheese?

Good morning world! Guess who’s up at 7 am?! I haven’t been up this early and actually felt alive in a long time. I woke up in pain but I wasn’t weak like I’ve been and the best part was this; I woke up just in time for the sunrise. It’s funny that such a phenomenal event like that happens every, single, day, and how seldom we actually see it. Or stop to watch it. My immobility in the last few weeks has left me observing the worlds tiny gifts that I didn’t used to see before. Like yesterday I watched a spider web glisten in the sun and was like whoa, that’s beautiful dude! Because my life has become so contained, I’ve been seeing the small things surrounding me, and suddenly they seem just as big as the things I used to strive for- independence, health, conquering the world. Those kinds of things. It reminded me of something Mark Nepo said in an interview that I wrote in my notebook. He was talking about finding “the special” in everyday life and how important that is to happiness. “Become easily pleased. Find what’s special in everything. Everything glows. There are more distractions and distortions now than ever. The challenge is how do we balance–how do we hold at bay all the voices that are forever crowding in, and hear the voice of own soul.” The answer, he said, lies in stillness, reflection, and “spiritual aerobics.” I liked hearing that. And I find the special little things often outside when I’m on a walk with Monty. A fallen birds nest or a bright red door or marshmallow clouds, a little kid with a suitcase or an old man with grocery bags. Whatever it is, it’s easy to miss. But I notice that when I’m quiet I am surrounded by extraordinary things. You don’t have to travel across the world to see incredible things. It’s more about a change in perception than location. We have a tendency to think happiness is “just over there,” beyond the next hurdle, over the fence. I keep hearing that happiness is something already within you and I see now, it’s just about accessing it, activating it. It’s gettin deep in here yall!

This week marked the beginning of a new project: GOOD NEWS IN PLAID! Woo woo. This project started pretty unorganized and is still coming together. But I have to say, I feel better after I report good news. I like hearing other people’s good news. And I enjoy avoiding politics, terrorism, disease, and murder. Who knew? In the beginning I was like why am I doing this? I don’t even feel like moving! But then I was like, wait, I have nothing else to do. I might as well report good news. And it’s something I can do from bed, or the floor, or the couch. So I’ve been recording myself (and Monty) everyday reporting a few pieces of positive news from my own life and other people’s. Yesterday, 32 people left comments reporting their good news on Facebook, so I recorded myself reading everyone’s little bits of good news..without reading through them first. Then I showed it to my sister and realized it was a 10 minute long video and one of the more awkward things you’ve ever seen in your life. So she recommended I edit it down to like 5 bits of good news instead which is probably a better idea. I try to disregard the ridiculous parts of the video where I look and sound like a moron–like when I ask “You can make your own cheese??” (You’ll see) My sister laughed for a good ten minutes at me for that one. But it’s just about positive energy and good news, so I’m sticking with it. It’s also really hard to find the music you want on YouTube, so this video ends super cheesy and the music sounds like something that would come at the end of that movie Precious or on a Cadillac commercial. But anyway, Keep the good news coming…I love hearing it and reporting it, and I think everyone agrees that the world could always use more good news. Below is segment 2 and 4. You can see all the videos at goodnewsinplaid.wordpress.com. I’ll continue to post 1 a day.

In other news, I started seeing two new doctors. One is a Chinese doctor who practices traditional Chinese medicine and is the most delightful man you’ve ever met in your life. Doctor Xu (pronounced Sue)It’s a whole different approach to health, but a lot of it makes sense to me. It seems to work with your body instead of just supplementing pills for symptomatic relief. And since this illness manifests itself in entire body system malfunctions, it feels like a good approach to take. After looking at my tongue and nails and asking a few questions he said “OK, I fix you. Two or three months. I fix you.” He makes his own chinese herbs and creates a tea out of them based on getting your body back in balance and “lighting your internal flame.” Haha. Whatever that means, I’m up for it. He also helped my sister out a lot when she was experiencing chronic migraines and often sick after college. So now he gets to try to heal her sister. His Chinese herb teas taste like what I imagine a bird’s nest ground up in a blender with some carrots thrown in would taste like. But if it means getting better, I’ll try anything. He also does acupuncture which I really like and cupping which feels awesome. But it leaves you looking like you’ve been attacked by a circle monster. See?

I know, it looks gross. 

The other doctor I am seeing is a Russian woman who practices naturpathic medicine. She believes that I didn’t get rid of the lyme disease on the first go-round and so I am still fighting that with “co-infections” and that’s most likely why I feel like I’m dying. :) Anyway, she has a plan, and Dr. Xu has a plan, and I’m trying it all. Open to anything. Maybe with a combination of Western, Eastern, and Russian Naturpathic medicine, I will get to feeling like a human being again. As my mom says, “All the kings horses and all the kings men will put Humptey Dumptey back together again.” It all sounds good to me.

Health, Happiness, Humpty Dumpty

Good News.

I never write on Sundays, but I have a little energy today and after a sick and cloudy week, I’m taking advantage of some mental clarity. The truth is I don’t have a lot of news physically. I have been the weakest I’ve been in my life. It’s a little nuts. It feels like trying to move through maple syrup. So life has been in slow motion, literally. But as always, I have help and constantly remind myself how lucky I am for it.

The real challenge with this latest crash has been maintaining emotional resilience. I remind myself of the same idea each time it gets overwhelming; this is only temporary. And when times are golden and everything is going perfectly, that will be only temporary too. The point is to find inner peace and joy that is resilient through circumstance. So just look at the bad times as intense training. Training isn’t forever. At some point you go out into the game and test your skills. And no doubt, the world will always provide you with situations in which to test yourself and what you’ve learned. This year has had a lot of training and a lot of tests, but a part me feels that I am only just beginning to understand any of it.

Since I have a lot of down time, not moving and all, I do a lot of weird things. Like look at nothing out of a window for a long period of time, not really knowing how long has passed when I snap back to present. Sometimes I listen to Debussey’s Claire de Lune over and over and over and just feel the aliveness of a song like that, even though I feel like only a half-alive body. I watch French movies on Fridays because verbally, it sounds nice. French Movie Fridays. Also I love French movies. I write down things in my notebook that I don’t immediately understand or know from where they come; sometimes I just feel like the person holding the pen, channeling something else altogether, something separate from me. Deepak Chopra would say there is no separate, there is no you and no me. Each person manifests the entire universe, all of the people, and the source itself, within themselves– thus separation is just a human illusion. This is why when you hurt someone else, you hurt yourself. This is the oneness found in “waking up.” This is how he explains the part of you that isn’t born and won’t die. It embodies it all, and it is eternal. So I guess some of the things I write down are being pulled from an all-access consciousness that has always existed. I don’t know. Maybe getting sick is what it would take for me to stop and pay attention, to finally write down dormant words, to know what it is to be alive. I just know sometimes I write things that are far more intelligent than I am and I don’t even feel right taking credit for them. Except the White Girls on Facebook post, that was me. :)

There’s a funny phenomena that happens when I’m sick: Once I start to feel better and recover, I can never remember how sick I was or how bad it felt. I can imagine it but I can’t feel it. It’s like my brain deletes the sense memory of it. I have read that this happens to women after childbirth, and I guess it’s an evolutionary survival mechanism. If women remembered how bad it hurt, they’d never have more babies! It’s like the worst hangover you’ve ever had. You swear you won’t do it again, but then the beer tastes so good and the buzz is so nice! I don’t know what the meaning is behind not being able to recall precisely the physical feelings, but being this weak and incapable feels pretty burned in my mind by now. I may not be able to access these feelings again once I’m better, but what I need to remember is that shit, life is fragile. One day you wake up and you’re too weak to walk and your mom and sister have to feed you. It’s not all pretty, but I know there is meaning in it. It’s easy to throw up your arms and scream WELL WOE IS ME,  life is unfair and none of this matters. And I’ve done that some days. The problem in doing this is that the very conclusion leaves your experience meaningless. The suffering is the hard part, but if you can hold on, if you learn to live anyway, then you’ve transcended the pain and evolved and it wasn’t for nothing; growth can never be bad. Following the pain always comes pleasure, even if it’s a simple change in perspective. Plenty of people have experienced far greater tragedies than me and come out on the other side– happy and wise. Like my mom for instance, who survived the death of two husbands, but didn’t succumb to darkness and managed to emerge happy and loving.

The goal in all of this for me is not just to stay positive and hopeful, but also to keep my perspective wide and my problems right-sized. This is just a moment in the context of eternity. It’s still really hard but it’s not forever and I’m not on my own. It’s easy to feel like the world is really big and you are really small and your little problems are terrible but that they don’t really matter. But they do, and you do. The way to make them matter most is to conquer them– with humility, grace, whatever you got. Everyone has their battles and each leads to their own lessons and outcomes, all necessary for the evolution of the world. But we all have to do our part. I don’t pretend to know how it all works, and I don’t think we’re meant to know the whole truth in this limited dimension we live in. That may explain why I had a dream last night that TRANSCENDED TIME AND SPACE and I have no idea how to put it into words. I probably sound like a kid during his first experience of dropping acid, but some things we just can’t fathom on earth. And that’s fine. We just need to do our best.

So I’m going to keep trying. Keep hanging on. Keep reading what the Greats have to say and try to make sense of it all. It’s been a challenge to stay optimistic and happy, but I know it’s necessary and I will work just as hard at that as getting better physically. In that light, I’ll introduce a new project that begins tomorrow. I’m going to report a few minutes of only good news every day for 30 days. I’ll begin with personal good news (like, I had enough energy to take a shower today!) then report national good news and then worldly good news. The idea is simple- I’m too young to be cynical. My situation is depressing enough and I don’t want to keep watching the news to see how crappy the world is and how bad people are. It’s important to stay informed on events, but I think it’s just as important to see the good things people are doing and the positive stories too. So that is the newest project and I will post the first video tomorrow around 6–that seems like a newsy time doesn’t it? I will always wear a plaid shirt because plaid makes me happy and I have a lot of them and we’re striving for good vibes here. To give you an idea of things I won’t be talking about, here is the backdrop to my very high tech news desk.

Watch the good news at goodnewsinplaid.wordpress.com.

**Addendum! I jumped the gun on my 6 o clock timeline. I’m a little behind. But the good news is now up at goodnewsinplaid@wordpress.com. If you have good news you’d like me to read on air, send it to goodnewsinplaid@gmail.com. It can be anything from your little league team won to you’ve been constipated for a week and maybe you finally had a bowel movement. If it’s good, it’s good.

Health, Happiness, Plaid.

A Call For Positivity.

Good morning world, it’s been a little while. It’s 4 am in California and I have to say I’m OK feeling wide awake despite the indecent hour. I feel like I’ve been in a sedated state, in and out of consciousness for the last week–more out than in– and it feels good to finally feel alert enough to touch base with myself again. I have never been this sick before, at least not for this long. It’s beginning to make my other sick days feel more like mere child’s play. They’re nearly laughable when I think of them now.

I move when I can, which isn’t very often. It’s difficult to do basic things for myself these days and it sucks to have to ask, but that’s where I am, so I’m trying to make peace with it. Walking is really difficult and the weakness gets overwhelming. It sort of feels like trying to walk underwater–like someone smothered all of my joints in honey. Anyway, being stationary for such a long period of time isn’t super fun (for me or for Monty) and sometimes the mental housekeeping can be harder than the physical. It’d be nice to lose myself in the distraction of anything physical…tennis, shopping, drinking with friends, a road trip or camping! But it’s all out of the question, so I am left to my consciousness and the quiet of days as the world around me spins on without pause. I know it’s vital that I stay positive; that I don’t succumb to the fear and despair lingering between wakefulness and sleep, and that I surrender to where my life has me for now, and that I remain precisely clear about the difference between that and giving up. I am always going to pursue the healthiest routes and happiest choices, but I also need to just exist where I am- which right now, is immobilized in my sisters apartment. When I try to move around I am worse the next day, so it’s bed rest for me. Not much of a choice anymore.

The good news is, I have help. My sister has been doctor for a while now, while my brother-in-law insists on eating when I don’t want to. My mom flew in on Thursday so now the help has help and I am lucky for all of it. And Monty too of course. He’s a mental help to us all, and when things get sad or heavy somehow he finds a way to make us all laugh.  I think he’s anxious for me to be back on two feet but he’s patient as always. He’s taken to my sister and brother-in-law, like he knows they’re the ones with the energy. They’re the ones who will throw him the ball. So he plays fetch with them and my mom and when he comes back in he trots straight over to whatever piece of furniture I am using as a bed and curls up next to me; content until the next time he needs to go out. He is a constant reminder to be in the present moment. That is something that dogs just get and humans mostly miss.

I am going to be very honest and say that emotionally I’ve been kind of a wreck. I’m not a huge crier but for some reason when I fall into these weak, dizzy crashes, tears just roll down my face. I don’t even necessarily feel sad when it happens. It’s like this strange cause and effect I don’t feel I can control. So, I let the tears come. I try not to harp long on any negative thoughts or fearful worries; they are not only useless, but detrimental at this point if I give them too much pause. My mom told me “You can’t afford the privilege of a negative thought right now,” so I try to stay away from them. If they come, I let them, and then I let them leave. I am beginning to learn the art of detachment. Or I’m getting a crash course in it. I don’t know that I have another choice, and I must say I’m getting pretty good! I’m writing about this because I know that so many people have felt what I am feeling now, and many of them have not had support systems behind them. I want anyone to know who’s sick or troubled and reading this that it’s OK to want to punch the wall, scream really loud, curse the car door and earth, the universe, or God. I have done all of these things in darker moments, and sometimes a good scream or cry is necessary. It’s OK. Sometimes if I’m too tired to yell, I just flip off the sky. As if the clouds brought me to this point. It’s like the most passive aggressive protest I can demonstrate, but since my arms down to my fingers are weak, I don’t leave it up there very long, which usually leads to cursing. Haha. But what I also know is that anger and screaming and crying and cursing…it just doesn’t get me anywhere in the right direction. It doesn’t move me along. It’s really easy to be mad at a situation; to be pissed off or sad or claim unfairness. But where that gets you is stuck further in the predicament you were already in, just now you’re a miserable person in a shitty situation. It’s just plain more interesting to be a happy person in a shitty situation. Try it! When people ask how I am I say “Terrible! And it’s the best day of my life!”

My goal now is to stay as happy and positive as I can, which so far has been extremely hard. But I’m going to keep at it. I’m letting negative thoughts come and go and I follow them up with something better. Something true. I constantly remind myself of what I have; love, a family that gives a shit, good doctors, good friends, and the best dog in the world.  A few examples; my friend Kaitlin aka Matt Damon texts me our inside jokes throughout the day, often consisting of lines from Billy Madison, Orange County, or philosophical thoughts on the Golden Girls. Sometimes a one word text can make me laugh, and that feels like a step in the right direction. My brother Nick sends me interesting and positive reading material or funny pictures of the baby. My Stupid Friend Jess sends me her favorite facebook statuses of the day, which are always terrible. And hilarious. My mom and sister let me cry when I need to but are always encouraging, reminding me of the truth, and that is so necessary at times like these. And me, I’m kind of just hanging on. I don’t really feel like I’m driving the car to my life right now, but, I can at least control the music. Is this metaphor too much? Anyway, instead of playing like, Coldplay and Radiohead, I’m trying to play happier and motivating things. The Black Keys, Vampire Weekend, The Rolling Stones, and Ke$sha. Come on, that Tic Toc song can make anyone dance. We’re out of the metaphor now, I actually like listening to that song.

So, that’s where I am. It’s a really rough time, but I know it isn’t forever. And I know the answer to it all is not in anger or sadness or self pity, even though these reactions and dispositions are often the easier, default choices. It’s funny how conditioned humans are to respond this way to stress in life–and how absolutely worthless it remains. You’d think after 2000 years of civilization we’d have gotten it by now. Even the dogs get it! Anyway, as I sit immobilized, a heat pack on my muscles and the smell of BenGay circulating in the air, I’m beginning to retrain myself. My body is crazy weak, so I’m going to work on a stronger mind. I know that every situation is an opportunity to grow, and I guess it comes down to whether you want the experience to leave you larger or smaller than you were before. My hope, of course, is to walk away wiser and stronger. And while it’s the harder path to take, I know it’s not impossible, and so many others have endured far worse and done just fine. In the meantime, I gotta stay positive. So send me funny stuff! Among the 25 pills, laughter is still my best and favorite medicine.

Health, Happiness, Hanging On.

A Shit Show.

I don’t know of any other way to describe the past week except as a shit show. And maybe that points to how juvenile I am, but I honestly can’t think of a more sophisticated word. If you read my last post, you can see that I was in a bit of a bad way last week. I crashed really hard last Monday and was feeling pretty deadly. We did the normal protocol and quadrupled my hyrdrocortisone and I mostly stayed lying on the couch or in bed, researching the little amount of money spent on this illness and writing somewhat of an angry blog about it. I don’t usually like to succumb to moments of mental negativity like that. I think anger has its reasons for existing, but I have always wanted this to be a place of optimism, humor, and hope. So I hope I didn’t put too bitter a taste into the community here. I also need to remember that more research than ever is being done, and while we do have a ways to go, we’ve already come along ways. I’m not going anywhere, and no matter how far agencies like the NIH and CDC take the research, the goal is always to be as happy as possible, with whatever you got. The other goal of this blog is to promote awareness, and so maybe my little moment of anger can help do that in the long run. I think the best thing it did was inspire many of you to comment or email with your stories. Many people say it helps them to read this blog, and the truth is, it is just as helpful for me to hear from you. It’s easy to get so lost in your own story that you only see yourself in the world. The truth is no matter how poignantly real it can feel sometimes, we aren’t alone in this, and that’s maybe the most important thing to remember.

On Sunday morning I had started to bounce back from my week-long crash. I thought. Part of the “Shit Show” of last week was that on Monday, our kitchen flooded due to a leak in the wall. It was going to involve some major reconstruction (basically knocking out every wall in the kitchen) but they assured us it would only take a week. My sister thoughts were that we should move apartments. She’s all too familiar with how long a “week” takes in contractor time. But the idea of even packing my bags in a suitcase felt devastating to me, and luckily my brother-in-law was in no mood either to up and move overnight. So we decided to stay. But a few days later as I was walking through the hall, water seeped up through the carpet onto my feet. Never really a good sign. The workers came back and found the leak had begun to flood the master bed and bath and the front closet. By Friday morning, I was still pretty crashed and somehow there were 5 workers in the kitchen beginning demolition and making a shit ton of noise. The noise permeated my dreams but I stayed sleeping. If you can call it that. Keegan came in my room a few times asking if I wanted to go to his parents house to sleep, but the idea of getting in a car and going felt like too much. I said no, rolled over, and went back to exhaustive sleep. The demolition went on.

By the afternoon Keegan and his friend were moving the big stuff out to an apartment across the street. I packed in the laziest sick person way possible. I honestly didn’t have a lot of stuff, but what I did have I threw in two boxes Keegan gave me, and left all my clothes on hangers. Keegan and his friend moved my bed first and the couch so that I could literally go from my bed in the current apartment to my bed in next one. As they moved it on the first load, I laid on the floor in my empty room with Monty and fell asleep staring at the ceiling. I watched Keegan and his friend carry heavy things and sweat and noted how interesting faces look when you’re looking at them upside down. Here are some pictures of me during the move.

Day 1. 

Day 2.

As you can see I’m a big help. Anyway in two days, Amelie and Keegan had everything packed, moved and unpacked, and I laid there watching life walk back and forth carrying boxes over my head. It was a new perspective though and I’m always down for new perspectives. My favorite line from the whole moving experience came from my sister as she was unpacking in her new bathroom and I was laying on the couch counting ceiling popcorn. “Our fucking toilet is leaking!!!!!!” This was after three cabinets fell completely off of their hinges in the kitchen and the sink pipes leaked underneath when you turned the water on. When it leaks, it pours. If I could consume alcohol, I would have played a drinking game called “Drink Every Time Something Breaks” and had a gay old time. Instead I slept or played DJ for Amelie and Keegan while they packed and unpacked–which mostly consisted of me playing Carlae Rae Jenson’s “Call Me Maybe” on repeat. God that song is good.

By Sunday we still didn’t have cable which meant we WERE WITHOUT OUR SUNDAY FOOTBALL and my sister was WITHOUT THE RED ZONE ON ESPN which meant she COULDN”T TRACK HER FANTASY TEAMS ON A PLAY BY PLAY BASIS which was a problem, you can imagine. So we went to a bar with 4,000 TV’s and I felt sad as I watched the Saints lose in overtime and was the only Saints fan in the joint. I still yelled ‘Who Dat’ if ever so quietly. Unfortunately my body felt like it was slowly slipping away from me. An hour later when sitting upright felt near impossible and I felt a migraine coming on, I went home and fell straight asleep. Whatever momentum I had felt that morning was long gone and when I woke up a few hours later I had the migraine of the century, which lasted until yesterday. I didn’t fall asleep until 4 on Monday morning and when I woke up, I was more weak than I’d ever felt. I took Monty outside, but with this new apartment comes a flight of steps to get to ground level. I hate those steps, and I cursed every last one as I climbed them one by one, the way old people do. I threw the ball for Monty a few times, then apologized to him for being a human wasteland and came back inside. I set up camp on the couch and wondered what had happened to my limbs over night. It was like the cement fairy came over night and filled my whole body up. Thanks cement fairy!!

Yesterday morning I didn’t think I felt any worse until I tried to get out of bed. It was really hard to move. Nearly impossible to walk. I didn’t feel like I could make a fist. I wasn’t sad but I kept breaking down in tears, I think because I was scared. This felt different; worse than it’s felt before and I was nervous this time I might actually croak. Usually I just curse the illness, roll back over and go to sleep. Anyway, going to the ER is always a last-case scenario but after talking to Dr. Emils (one of my best friends in her last year of med school), my mom and my sister, we decided it was the best option. At least we could eliminate the possibility of eminent death since I had been getting worse over the week and the iv fluid and steroid would help with the weakness and get the migraine to go down. So Amelie left work early, helped me up the stairs and I cried as I said goodbye to Monty because I really didn’t want to leave him and I was also scared I’d get bad news at the hospital. It was the first time I found myself praying they wouldn’t find anything, because usually I’m looking for an answer. This time I just wanted the normal “We don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but here’s something for your discomfort.” Luckily, that’s what I got. As well as kind nurses and doctors and basically no wait time. A whole other world compared to the New Orleans hospital last January.

Hospital gowns, like mullets, are business in the front and party in the back. 

So, that brings us to the present. The good news is I’m not dying. I only feel like I’m dying. Haha. But, that I can handle. For some reason I woke up with swollen joints this morning, so it’s just another reason to take it slow. It’s also a creative challenge to see how many fun things I can do from the supine position. I don’t know what this crash is about, but it’s just going to take some waiting out. The best part through all of it is I realized just how much I didn’t want my sometimes shitty life to be over. I had been pretty down the last week being sick. I felt myself saying “Owell” as a speeding car raced past Monty and me on our walk and I entertained the thought of it taking me out. It was just my dark sense of humor of course, but now I say “No way JOSE!” to that car, and I live to see another day. Even if from the couch. Sorry for the length of this one. Like I said, it’s been a shit show of a week

 

Health, Happiness, Shit Shows.

 

 

One Thing, Once a Day.

I love getting late birthday presents in the mail. Wait, I love getting mail period. For one thing, I think the art of letter writing is becoming extinct, so it’s always pretty special to get something written in one of a kind hand-writing, written just for you. Dear Mary… Anyway, late birthday presents are like those blooper scenes they show during the credits of a movie you liked. Just when you thought it was over–bam! My brother Nick and his wife Estee sent me two new shirts and a skirt and a necklace with a hand-written card, the best! And my sister brought me shopping at Nordstrom. Her and Keegan have kind of adopted me as their 28-year-old child. Keegan even sent me to my room yesterday. I also unpacked my suitcase at their house two weeks ago, the first time I’ve really not lived out of my suitcase since February. All my siblings are like extra parents, each pitching in to help in their own ways and I am really thankful for that. It’s easy for me to forget that my situation could be a lot worse. They have all encouraged me to visit them, and that is a real gift. Anyway, I love shopping and I love new clothes, but it has turned into such a silly thing for me to love, mostly because I never wear normal clothes anymore. I never really go anywhere and I hardly see people besides Monty and my family. My uniform has evolved into leggings and t-shirts–every guys fantasy.

Last week and all weekend was a sick week. Like a sick day, but you know, times 7. I once wrote that I was the mayor of Migraine City, but I am upgrading myself this week to Governor because my head is super angry about something and apparently wants the world to know. Here’s your shot head, let it all out! Every day I keep telling myself I will get dressed in my new clothes and I will go somewhere and I’ll do my hair and makeup and look like someone who has her shit together. But, that has yet to happen. “Tomorrow” I tell myself. Then the song from Annie starts playing in my mind and I bet my bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun, and I will go out in it! Since I’m in Cali, there is always sun, but when you have a migraine, it feels like if you were to go outside under that bright sun you’d start melting like the witch from the Wizard of Oz. Anyway, the migraine cycle continues, but why am I talking about migraine cycles? I’m even boring myself.

When I’m in the throes of a sick week, I can start to get down. And also start to go stir crazy. So there are a few things I do and a few things I don’t do. Maybe most importantly, I do not watch TV during the day. There is just something undeniably sad about daytime television, and sunlight coming in through the blinds..maybe reflecting off the TV screen? Yuck. The only time I don’t find a sunlights’ reflection on a TV screen depressing is on the weekends when we’re watching football. Exceptions to every rule.

First, I keep a book on hand and I read. I swear it’s like I’ve discovered the joy of reading only last year..at age 27. Pretty ridiculous since I discovered the joy of writing at around age 9. I feel like I’m catching up on all the years that I began books and never finished them. I always associated reading a book with homework, something I had to do. It never felt like I had a choice in the matter. As soon as book reports became part of my schooling in 6th grade, it became my goal to see how little of the book I could read and how high a grade on the report I could get. Unfortunately, I work really well under pressure–so the night before it was due I’d skim through the book, find the important parts, and write a flowery report. I almost always received A’s on them. I was actually proud of myself for being able to complete the work this way! What an idiot. Anyway, now that I have really experienced what getting lost in a book is like, I feel like I have years of catching up to do. So that’s partly what I’m doing. Especially because it’s not sad at all to read while sunlight is coming through the window. In fact it’s the most fun to go outside and read. Monty and I had been going to the park daily, but I crashed mid-week and we haven’t been back yet. Anyway, right now I’m reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. A true story about a woman who lost her way and decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail by herself, with no experience. Truthfully, it’s a little difficult to read because she is in a lot of physical and emotional pain so far, and I like reading to carry me away from real life, so in that light it’s not been as fun to read as Gone Girl but I’m just about 1/3 in, so I’ll see how the next 50 pages go.

The second thing I do is create something. It can be anything from a four line poem to a line drawing. The goal is not to create a masterpiece work of art. The goal is to let your soul do some talking. Sometimes what you make will be crappy and sometimes you’ll surprise yourself. But the thing is, now no matter how sick or worthless I felt today or the fact that I never got dressed in real clothes, at least when someone asks me what I did today I can say “I wrote a poem,” or “I drew a picture of a stupid cat.” So now today was not a complete waste. Here are some simple rhyming poems.

*I am tired
But do not sleep
I am sad
But do not weep
I close my eyes
And count to 10
If I still feel it
I’ll do it again
Until the clouds part
And the dark clears
I’ll think of my loves
And not of my fears.

*In the corners of my mind
In the absence of a dime
I think about home
In a house that isn’t mine.

*At night I roam
through consciousness alone
Would I have chosen this
If I would have known!

*At least at the end of day
Where I never got dressed
I can say I wrote a poem
And that’s something I guess.

Normally I hate rhyming poems, and I don’t necessarily love these. But, they’re what came out. So I let them. Because that’s what my soul had to say today, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s good or bad. It’s the fear of making something good or bad that is dangerous. Once I let that fear go, I kind of free myself. The worst that can happen is you write a shitty poem or you draw a shitty picture. Certainly there are worse things! Either way, you’ve got something to look back on or laugh at or talk about, and you weren’t completely at the mercy of illness.

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I drew the above drawing a few days ago. It turned out to be one of my favorites…drawn on a sick day where I never got dressed. It started with a very simple shape; a leaf. Then I repeated the pattern and this is what turned up. I had no idea what I was sitting down to draw that day, but it’s another example of letting your soul speak. Or stillness speak. I just know that when I designate time to letting things come through me, I am usually surprised. I end up creating something I never could have thought of myself. It’s strange, the way sometimes your dreams can be insanely more creative or smarter than you are in real life. I guess it’s the subconscious at work. This one is titled “I Don’t Normally Look Like This” and is for sale for $10.

Anyway, that’s been the last 7 days. Fingers crossed that tomorrow is migraine free and filled with more energy and I get to wear some happy clothes and run errands like humans do. If not, well then…it’s back to the drawing board.

Health, Happiness, One Thing a Day.

Sometimes You Gotta Say Yes.

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Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when it hurts. When it would be not just easier or more convenient to say no, but less painful, less exhausting, perhaps even, the healthier option– even then, sometimes, you gotta say yes.

As my role as the “sick girl” has slowly developed over the past few years, I’ve noticed how often and how easily I’ve begun to say no to things. And that’s mostly for the sake of my livelihood. I don’t have the endurance to do the things I once did, nor do I have the resilience to bounce back if I overstep the boundary. There’s an invisible line with illnesses like this; one that not even the sick person can see, and it doesn’t make a sound when you overstep. Not until later, when it’s too late to take anything back. So, you pay for it. And you start to feel your way through it, constantly guessing whether you’ve gone too far or done too much. It’s about as easy as pin the tail on the donkey in the dark, with booze. But this solid body of mine, as broken as it is, it always lets me know if I’ve infringed on that boundary. Always.

The last few days have been crappy. Not Colorado crash crappy, but, crappy. There have been a few 26 and 27 pills a day, days. Which I’m learning how to be OK with. Even sick days, where the most you do is brush your teeth, are OK too. They have to be. It’s interesting what this illness turns you into; a spectator where you once a participant. I often feel the quick pace of the world spinning and everyone rushing by with their busy lives, and then there’s me…just kind of, standing lying there. I miss being busy. There’s something comfortable about always having something to do, someone to see; there’s an importance about it. I notice now how different my to-do lists are verses my to-do lists a few years ago. 1. Wash clothes. 2. Pick up prescriptions. 3. Buy new notebook!

I’ve begun examining my life a little closer lately, and am putting a lot of thought into how I spend my time. It’s really crazy to think that I can sort of do what I want given that I don’t have a full-time job or any REAL responsibility besides my health and my dog Monty. (Although I don’t know, one might call my constant correspondence with the Walgreens pharmacy a full-time job in and of itself. For real though.) The thing is, since I can’t hold a full-time job right now, I don’t have any income. So that’s the first damper on “Doing what I want.” The second damper is, duh, I’m incapacitated most of the time. If I had my way, I’d be going, and doing, and meeting, luncheoning, and painting and creating and…you get it. Saying YES a lot. I’d be one of those busy people with alphabetized spice racks and really organized DVD collections. And I’d run half marathons for fun! BLECH. Scuse me, I just puked thinking about running a half marathon. Anyway, that’s not my life. Most of the time I feel too exhausted for showers and everything I buy at this point is on someone else’s dime…so it’s really teaching me a lesson in humility, appreciation, and grace. Every night I pray that I will be able to pay back everyone who has been so gracious in taking care of me. And I solemnly believe that day will come. One day.

In the meantime, I have a lot of something that many people don’t: free time. And whether I’m sick or not, it’s up to me how I spend my time. I find myself feeling bad a lot about not having a full-time job and not being able to support myself. I was used to having  a job and independence define me. But, I think that’s pride and the ego getting the best of me and I constantly have to remind myself that if I could, I would. But right now, it’s not where I am. So how about instead of feeling shitty on top of feeling shitty, I try to make better use of my time. I decided I’m going to read as much as I can, write as much as I can, and start looking at this free time as a gift instead of something that “happened to me.” A lot of people would love time off from work, to be a spectator, to read for the sake of reading. To be honest, not having something to do is harder than you’d think. We’re kind of a culture that tends to define ourselves by our work. I guess I’m redefining both my purpose and the definition of that word. Is it still considered work if you’re not getting paid?

This week has been rough health wise, but today I was sick and tired of being sick and tired more than I was actually sick and tired. SO, I said, screw it. I took a bath, got dressed, and went to the park with Monty. Not because I felt like it, not because it felt good even, but because I needed to get out. Sometimes I do the things I would do if I weren’t sick, just for a little while. I can go outside. I can throw a ball for Monty and finish reading my book. I felt shitty the whole time, but mentally I needed it. Chances are, I’ll pay for it tomorrow. But it’s one of those weeks where I felt like I would be paying for something tomorrow whether or not I did anything today, so I went for it. Every once in a while, it’s nice to feel like things are on my terms. It’s my way of giving the illness the middle finger. And you know what? It felt good! Screw you sickness. Today, Mary Gelpi SAID YES.

So confident.

OK so maybe I am really over-glorifying my little trip to the park. But, I have to keep myself in check. It would be really easy for me to say no to anything that required leaving the house or socializing with people. I can feel the crotchety 80-year-old inside of me getting way too comfortable. I remind myself that I am 28. I need to stop being so opposed to meeting new people. (Dude, I hate meeting people. Also, I’m terrible at it.) I have to be OK with going places sometimes, because I think our souls like a change of scenery. I need to not automatically say no, even though my experience gives me that tendency. Sometimes I will pay for it, yes. But there’s a price to be paid for constantly saying no, too. So I’ve got to find the middle. I’m still young, and I need to start acting my age. Before I know it I’ll be drinking Ensure and wearing Oopse I Crapped My Pants. And then meeting people will be REALLY hard!

You know what else I did today? Bought a new notebook. That’s my favorite thing to buy. I’m very particular when it comes to notebooks. It takes me a while to pick one out and I sit there in front of the shelf of books running my fingers over pages, opening and closing it, taking measurements and looking like a crazy all the while, but I like to take my time. I can’t have things like paper texture or wide rule lines interfering with my writing. Anyway, I found a good one after going back and forth between two for 10 minutes. This is typically what I do when I buy anything. I’m very indecisive. So I’ll buy one, and then go home and think about the other. It’s terrible. Anyway, I’m trying to work on that. So I’m going to do some writing. And then some reading. And then I’ll do it again tomorrow I guess, in a park, and throw the stick for Monty. Because that’s what my life is right now, and it won’t always be that way. Maybe it’s not about  being important. Maybe it’s just about being.

Health, Happiness, Yes.

*To all my family and homies in New Orleans, my thoughts are with yall. Although I’m pretty sure most of you are drunk and having an OK time. Stay safe.

Is Happiness a Choice? A Book That Challenged All My Notions, and Won.

I think my favorite present to both give and receive is a book. And not an e-book, not a kindle or a tablet thingamajiggy. A real, tangible book with pages to flip through and words that you underline and notes in the margin that you come back to later. There is something necessarily palpable about a book for me. Maybe I just really like turning pages, but I don’t think I’ll ever make the switch to electronic literature. I know it costs us trees, but I kind of feel like a tree would be happy to be a book. If only trees could talk. OK, anyway, I received a book from my mom for my birthday, and I’ve been lost in it for the last 4 days. I kept telling myself I needed to write, but my urge to read was stronger. I had to finish it before I could do anything else. I think it may be one of the most important books I’ve read as of yet.

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“The Untethered Soul” is written by Michael Singer and I’d never heard of it or him until I began reading. The book is 181 pages but is densely written and covers everything from consciousness to identity to happiness to God to death to Christianity to the Tao. I really don’t know how he combined all of these topics so succinctly and covered them with such perfect simplicity, but he did, and it all made perfect sense. Every word. Sometimes I’d read a paragraph over and over, not because I didn’t understand, but because it felt so good to read the words. It was like light would suddenly pour in the room, and with each page (each TANGIBLE page) I felt more clarity, maybe even more happiness. At least more awareness of it. There is such a wide variety of topics he covers and methods associated with them, but he ties them all together seamlessly to teach one huge and vital lesson; to know yourself, and to find bliss. It will be difficult to summarize the whole thing up on just one page..this may need to be a two parter. So I’ll just cover a few topics that really captured me.To begin with, you can’t fix the world. You can’t fix other people, and you shouldn’t try. But you can become the purist and most open version of your Self, and that is your gift to the world. You will be the most successful and biggest help to humanity by knowing yourself truly, and waking up–becoming conscious. So long as you are unconscious, reacting to external factors, hiding behind fears and anxieties, letting that voice in your head dictate important matters, you cannot be of help to the world. You are stuck in your mind, and so you can’t go any further or higher up than that. Not until you wake up.

Like Tolle, Singer writes pretty extensively about how to answer the question “Who am I?” …a question I constantly ponder but feel my answer always comes up short. I am Mary Gelpi. Well no, that’s a label given to me by my parents. Take it away and I’m still here. Who am I? Who is the Self? It was more poignant and enlightening to hear him explain who we are not. Some we’ve been over before. Ready? You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. You are not the things that happened to you. You are not a gender role. You’re not even your personality. And here’s the big one: You are not that voice in your head. In fact the journey to discovering your self (which is who you are) involves the attempt to eliminate that voice. In other words: telling it to SHUT. UP. And in the meantime if you can’t get it to, DON’T LISTEN TO IT. For the love of GOD don’t listen to it. Think how many times that voice in your head has been wrong…a lot. But we continue to reach out to it for advice and guidance as though it were an intelligent shrink. It’s not, it’s noise. Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about voices plural in your head. That’s another disorder altogether and we don’t have time for it. I’m talking about the voice in your head that is constantly chattering. If you stop reading this right now and look around the room, just wait a few seconds and listen. It will begin talking. About anything. Stupid things. Funny things. Memories. To -Do lists. It’s noise. It’s a lot of noise that isn’t really propelling you in any direction on your mission. This attempt was among the original purposes of things like meditation and yoga. It wasn’t to pray or to exercise–it was to find inner stillness, the center. The center is where “You” reside. Behind the chatter, judgments, and noise is your soul or spirit, or whatever you’re comfortable calling it. It’s quiet there. It’s the part that doesn’t die. It’s the center of your consciousness, or what Zukav called The Seat of the Soul. (Also, another awesome book) So this is how the book begins; with the search for the self and a map of where to go to find it. Once you’re able to pull back the curtains on all the things that don’t define you, you begin to feel and hear the real you. Your higher self. Perhaps he puts it most accurately with this definition: the simple awareness of being aware. Or..You are not the thinking mid; you are aware of the thinking mind. 

“When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating. That is why meditation is the highest state. It is the return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. It’s really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was. It’s like you have been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot where you were. Someone shook you, and now you’re back to the awareness that you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing else changed. You simply stopped projecting your sense of self onto that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of Self. That is who you are.”

 There was one chapter that I re-read a few times, because it really challenged my notion of happiness. It asked this question, which I find myself constantly asking: Is happiness a choice? I have always believed that we are susceptible to our circumstances, therefore happiness isn’t really a choice because we aren’t in control. We can’t help it when bad things happen. But Singer absolutely disagreed with that, and I’m pretty sure he beat me. Just because we aren’t in total control doesn’t mean our happiness isn’t in our hands. If our happiness isn’t up to us, who is it up to? Other people? Circumstance? Conditions? No wonder we’re not happy! You can’t rely on anything or anyone else to cause your experience of happiness. It is entirely up to you. If you make the commitment to be happy, it is to be unconditionally happy. But, that means acceptance of the present. That means erasing your version of what you think your life needs to look like in order for you to be happy. That’s something a lot of people don’t want to give up.

I know what you’re thinking: What if my family dies in a plane crash? What if a bird shits on my head on the way to work? I can’t help that! Of course there will be challenging events in your life, you already know that or may have already experienced them. It doesn’t mean you don’t grieve appropriately and process the hard times. But it also doesn’t mean that you stop, that you can’t be happy again and continue to live a  beautiful life. (Just ask my mom, she was widowed twice, but has once again found happiness.) That’s part of the commitment. You have to accept what happens in the present, deal with it accordingly, and release. Keep going. There’s no hanging on to the past allowed. It will never change by you clinging. There’s no cringing about tomorrow allowed either. You’ll deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes. And think about it. Does you reacting and getting upset and yelling change the fact that a bird shit on your head? No, it doesn’t. Clearly our reactions are not only silly, they’re unintelligent. They serve no purpose. They’re just noise.

Your definitions of desirable and undesirable, good and bad, all come about because you have defined how things need to be in order for you to be okay. We all know we’re doing this, but nobody questions it. We think we’re supposed to figure out how life should be, and then make it that way. Only someone who looks deeper, and questions why we need the events of life to be a particular way, will question this assumption. How did we come up with the notion that life is not okay just the way it is, or that it won’t be okay the way it will be? Who said that the way life naturally unfolds is not all right?

This is still a challenging notion for me to process, but I know it’s right. This is not to say that making unconditional happiness your mission is easy–it isn’t. It’s probably the hardest work you’ll do. But I’ve decided to take this mission on. I certainly have the time, don’t I? Maybe we all do. But we fill it up with a lot of stuff. A lot of Kardashians and O’Reilly Factor and arguments and anger and work and chaos and noise. I think it’s time to slow down. Time to go IN, not out, and find that little nook where our soul is, and try to please it. What more important work could there be? Chopra says that this is a recreational universe and that we were meant to have fun here. We weren’t meant to suffer! So I think it’s time to play. Today is August 22nd. It’s my dad’s death day. Death birthday? I wonder if they celebrate the day you die in Heaven the way we celebrate birthdays here. Anyway, my dad was one of the happiest people I knew, and that’s what everyone else had to say about him–How positive and kind he was. This book reminded me of him and his constant disposition of joy, happiness, and love. I’m going to start my work toward consciousness and inner peace with him in mind and this book as a guide, or at least a solid starting place. I highly recommend The Untethered Soul if you’ve been searching for a deeper purpose or listening for a higher calling and need a little help getting started. This is a really good road map to begin with.

My favorite line from the book: It is actually possible to never have another problem for the rest of your life. 

Health, Happiness, and Real, Tangible Books.

*My favorite underlined phrases from the book. :)

What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle. It means that the events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you.

The only way to inner freedom is through the one that watches the self. 

It’s bad enough that your happiness is conditional upon your own behavior. When you start making it conditional upon other people’s behavior, you’re in serious trouble. 

It is not life’s events that are causing problems or stress. It is your resistance to life’s events that are causing problems or stress. 

If you want to understand stress, begin by realizing that you carry around with you your own set of preconceived notions of how things should be. 

Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. 

When a person is dealing with their own fears, anxieties, and desires, how much energy is left for dealing with what’s actually happening?

The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.