slow and awake

my body and my spirit want me to slow down – to find a way to be awake, alert, aware and slow at the same time.

I don’t feel like i know how to do this – I am good at speedy/driven or total collapse, the extremes. I run in circles (even when sitting still) – always doing (even when I don’t accomplish much). Escape from the chaos of speed means collapse – a wave of fatigue that overwhelms me when I am overwhelmed. 

I got the lesson early in life (and ongoing) that the way to deal with problems is to do, to push through, to just keep moving. I need to understand and fix, I need to either focus and do or avoid, hide and collapse.

I have a knowing deep inside that this is not the way that I am to live my life. That this is not the way towards health and wellness, that i need to slow down and find a way to stay awake to my life. This feels scary and unattainable but there are places in my life where I am able to do this. Spinning, gardening, magic, tai chi.

There are lessons and deep wisdom in the earth. worms slide through the earth in slow but deliberate movements, seeds wait until the ground is warm and wet enough before reaching slowly up and down, the plates move with grinding constancy, effecting massive change with slow intention.

I can and do live this way even though I am so familiar with the extremes. The path to ecstasy is slow and easeful but requires presence, aliveness and being awake.

confused

I am exhausted and anxious.

I have been on the edge of falling over tired all day and a foreboding feeling has been hanging over me. It feels like I am forgetting something – that I am going to get in trouble for something, that I have forgotten to do something important.

I was sitting in the car this afternoon while Ray was picking up some fruit and a woman walked past me with a very young baby in a snuggly on her chest. I started crying. I know that it is not something that I can do anything about right now and I’m not even sure that I want a baby of my own, but I am still extremely sad that it isn’t an option. 

I am confused about what I am supposed to be doing right now. My life just feels like an ongoing pattern of appointments, self-care, errands, illness, groceries, rests – repeat… when will this end? what are my options? what am i accomplishing?

The monotony of it is painful and I don’t know how to break it. 

—

I also know that this isn’t my whole life. That I do have times that are outside of this pattern – that i have times that are different, are fun, are inspiring, that support my soul, when I am doing things that make a difference,  with people that love me and support me. 

It seems like I flip between thinking (feeling?) things are great or awful. When I am in the awful – the pit of despair – I can follow that path until everything is forever bad and will never change. if i can take a step onto the path of good – the ecstasy, the joy – I am aware that not everything is awful and that I am capable of feeling good. All good – all bad. Internal judge making snap rulings.

When I am talking to my counsellor or my teacher/initiators I notice that everything can feel worse than it is. I do the opposite with my parents, with some friends and for a strange reason my doctor. I feel safe with some people for things to not be okay all the time and I guess I take the opportunity to let out that part of my life – sometimes though, I feel like I have made it out to be worse than it is – but I don’t know if that is part of the same false belief that I shouldn’t have problems that leads me to minimize with everyone else.

This is all stuff that I talk to S about and I guess it is starting to sink in. I thought about this all day and started to write this before I realized that it is all connected to my current assignment. It often seems to work this way for me – just as I am starting to worry about not having done enough or having forgotten my work, all the stuff that has been working me bubbles to the surface.

I think I get it… Or at least have read about someone who does. I read a blog called Gluten Free Girl because her writing and photography is wonderful and even though I am not having the best relationship with food right now, I do love it and enjoying reading about people who have good relationships with it.

This is an except of the ‘about me‘ page – i find it incredibly moving and inspiring…

Anyone who thinks that living gluten-free is deprivation? Come on over here for dinner.

We live in food. Food, to us, is sensuality and texture, kindness and laughter, being alive and in love. Roasted potatoes with sea salt. Cinnamon-walnut scones. Crispy pork belly. Mixed green salads with champagne vinaigrette. Pizza with prosciutto, chanterelle mushrooms, and goat cheese. Fig cookies. Scrambled eggs with truffle salt. Sautéd black kale. Shaved fennel with lemon. One crisp apple.

Food doesn’t have to be expensive to be spectacular. Sure, I’ve eaten foie gras a few times in the past year, and I love truffles after being in Italy. But one perfect peach, in late July, is true richness to me.

It’s about the best ingredients. Food in season, in an awake moment, with the right person. That’s great food.

We shop at farmers’markets as much as we can. We know the men who sell us fish by first name. We look for truly great olive oil. We allow ourselves to be surprised by good food. We feel fresh to it, every day. We like great spices and creamy butter and gelato in Italy (but not anywhere else). We eat the best food we can find in the places we find ourselves. We love to share.

There is so much to learn. When do I salt the food? How much vinegar should I use? What does a cross between a peach and an apricot taste like? Where do I find the best locally raised, grass-fed lamb? How would those brownies taste with sorghum flour instead? I love this.

We love the people who grow our food.

And one of my best accomplishments is when we are home, late at night after his shift at the restaurant is done, and the Chef eats the first bite of the dinner I have made for us. He pounds his fist on the table, grunts a little, and digs in.

In the end, that’s all that really matters.

This is a long way from where I am now, but this is what I want. She is swimming in the manifest sacred and is alive. She came to this place through illness and finally being diagnosed as celiac – her new book is called “Gluten Free Girl – How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back & How You Can Too”.

Sounds like something that might be good for me to read eh?

fear realized

So it looks like I was right to fear the end of the really good day – i feel like hell this morning. Swollen, stiff, sore and in a thick fog. I haven’t been able to get out of bed except for a desperate hobble to the bathroom and back.

damn. 

i sometimes hate feeling good because i hate the inevitable crash.

Dream – future removed?

i was helping clean up after a magical weekend event. it had been a weird weekend and i hadn’t felt very connected to the people or the magic at all.

Seana was there and wanted to talk to me about what she saw in me over the weekend. i was interested because it had felt to me that i hadn’t had any magical experience. it had all seemed really distant, that everyone was far away from me and i couldn’t contact the event or the people.

seana (or someone like her) saw that i was distant because i was being disconnected from something that was attached to my second chakra (according to the hand motions she was making). some possible future, some potential that doesn’t need to happen anymore was being removed.

i just noticed that i wrote second chakra above and also in my journal when i scribbled this down, but the image that i still have is of her demonstrating something being pulled away from my neck.

sex/creativity (2nd) and throat/communication (3rd) – what possible future that i was attached to is related to both?

is this somehow related to the stress that i have been carrying about my insurance – i have been talking and writing about needing to find a way to remove it from my body. i don’t see how that relates to both the 2nd and 3rd chakra’s though.

i wonder what that non-future was? it might be better that i don’t know.

I also woke up with the strangest phrase running through my head. someone in the dream mentioned a time when they accidentally drank their own urine and said “i am my yeast infection” – perhaps i am growing too concerned/attached to my own illness. perhaps i need to regain an identification with the rest of my Self.

state of the body – june 11

this is just a quick note recording the ‘state of the body’ – current symptoms and questions, how i am feeling, any changes and activities that might be related. i am going to do this occasionally to keep track. 

I woke up at 9 after a slightly rough night and sat up in bed reading and dozing. I was too tired and weak to get up until around 12:30 when i moved to a chair in the kitchen. Ray made me breakfast and i did email. My muscles are twitching all over the place.

I have spent the rest of the day on the couch resting and watching TV. I am too weak to be on my feet or in a chair. I couldn’t read for a while because my eyes wouldn’t stay focussed.

I am not feeling too hungry but am dealing with acid reflux so have to keep something in my stomach. I can’t take my Celebrex because it makes my stomach pain much worse and I get a lot of gas that makes me really bloated and belchy.

My pain level is alright today – I have the background ache that i always have, some nagging achy pain in my hands and feet, a slight headache and neck/shoulder pain. But generally, pretty good for how i have been feeling lately. I am still constipated but it is slightly better because i haven’t had to take Dilaudid in a few days.

On top of it all I am dealing with a wicked yeast infection that i think must come from the minocycline that Dr. G put me on for my arthritis. I am not sure if I should see a rheumatologist or just stay with him as he is the only one who has really listened to me and understood what is going on. 

It just doesn’t seem fair that I have GERD, constipation and a yeast infection on top of all the crap i deal with regularly! yuck.

good news?

cautiously, i am writing about getting a call from my insurance company this morning about my long-term disability application. She asked me lots of questions about my application – the fax was blurry – and thanked me for being such a  good historian. I guess that comes from the experience of dealing with insurance for Ray for the last three years.

We talked about my abilities and symptoms, my ‘activities of daily living’, my treatment and the current exploration of the arthritis angle… i wasn’t sure where it was going until the end when she told me that she had enough info to make her determination and that she didn’t see that an employment consultant would be useful yet as i am really still in limbo waiting for effective treatment… that we should wait at least six months and see if it would be possible to start thinking about part-time return! oh – and mentioned that they don’t have my banking info but will cut a cheque for the first payment and I can send it to them later…

holy shit. I’m trying not to get too attached until after I get her letter but… deep breath.

a letter to Elizabeth – figuring it out as i write…

This morning I wrote to Elizabeth from Screw Bronze! in response to her request for addresses from people who would like to receive her postcards… In writing that email I figured out a bunch of stuff that had been floating around in my mind for a while but not managed to form into anything coherent. Here is a version of that letter…

—–

Dear Elizabeth – i’m hereby answering your call and offering myself as a willing recipient of a postcard! 

I haven’t written to you before but have been reading your blog everyday for a few months now and it is firmly part of my daily routine. I read it to my partner Kathryn when she is able to listen over coffee in the morning.

I can’t remember how I found your blog but I remembered you right away from the news coverage of the carpet layers that held you hostage! Your writing and the connection to the rest of the disability blogosphere has been incredibly helpful for both my partner and myself.

Kathryn was struck three and a half years ago with a sudden catastrophic headache that has never let up – you know, lightening bolt to the side of her head, fell off the toilet onto the floor – the standard nothing on the MRI/CAT/LP, “we don’t know what’s wrong with you and there is nothing to be done but pain meds” medical mystery that I know you understand… I was her caretaker for a couple of years before my own health declined rather intensely and I am now also on disability with severe FM/CFS and arthritis of as yet undetermined variety.

Your blog and the rest of the disability bloggers that you have introduced me to (you have some great friends that love you very much!) have been instrumental in my developing understanding of myself as disabled rather than only sick. I have found some power in seeing my life through a disability lens – I am chronically ill but i am also disabled and I am no longer waiting to get better so that i can get back to my old life. I am accepting that my life is never going to be the same and that there are going to be challenged to be met in order to live as large as life as possible. By accepting disability, I am accepting help and mobility aides and am living more (and in living more i am also accepting when my life by necessity occurs on my couch for a few days!).

I have been able to move out of some of the depression that came with my illness and caretaking for kathryn and I thank you for your example. You are living huge and hard and powerfully – even more than I lived when i was healthier to be frank! You are powerfully demonstrating the impact that action and drive have on your life and on the lives around you. (Have I mentioned how loved you are? It feels strange to be saying that to someone I have never met but it is seriously obvious reading your comments and how often you are mentioned in other people’s writing that you are held tightly in the arms of many.)

The lesson i am being offered in this illness is about surrender – but for a long time I was shutting down, thinking that my life needed to be put on hold, stopped – I now understand that i need to surrender to asking for and accepting help (and in that – love), surrender to a life that, though different, does not need to be smaller. Surrender the picture of the life I thought I was going to have when I was 30 and paint the new image of the new Self and life that is emerging. This is all about transformation, I guess.

I have started writing a blog of my own – i haven’t shared the address with anyone yet – but I thought that I should send you the link to the post i wrote that was inspired by your post about disability.

Well, that’s probably enough rambling from a stranger up the road!

In love, challenge and powerful ACTIVE surrender!
Christina

PS – Victoria wouldn’t know what hit ‘em with you for Mayor! 

June 7 – fatigue

the heavy fatigue has continued and even worsened today. I don’t think i have ever experienced something like this – too tired to even lift my arms or open my eyes at some points… i have been on the couch all day after a half block walk with Mabel incapacitated me. I don’t think that i have gotten up more than 6 times to go to the bathroom or get food. i had to cancel my massage this afternoon – i couldn’t get there and was too sore anyway.

my heart is racing, i am out of breath walking slowly across the room with the walker, my eyes won’t focus, my whole body is tender, my legs are weak and heavy – i don’t know what to do… i have thought that i was doing things only to open my eyes and realize that i was daydreaming (hallucinating?).

I have been really scared – things have been getting harder as i have come off prednisone and I am worried that this is where i am now. 

i just want to go to sleep and wake up at least somewhat better tomorrow.

June 5 – raw

Today was tumultuous… (i can’t believe i got the spelling right on the first try!)

I feel like I have been tossed from one shore to the other over and over again. Many tears, many laughs – i don’t know what to say about it all other than it’s a lot and i am tired. i just feel raw.

Following up on the physical purification thoughts from yesterday it occurs to me that the fact that i am really constipated is probably also related… stuck and waiting.

Went to see the sex in the city movie this afternoon and cried – not at all what i expected! It was funny, but also a lot of relationship stuff that reminded me in some way of my parents… not that my parents are anything at all like the characters in that show!

Ray and I worked through some trouble she is having communicating with her pain doctor and found new ways of understanding each other’s current experience. it was really good to have that and i feel closer to her again. the pain we are both feeling can distance us but it also can bring us together.

The rice pudding that Ray made for dinner was really soothing. It was full of life and her love and was wonderful. I sat just breathing it in for quite a while before I ate. Alive.

New assignments from Sage – lots to think/feel/notice – food, voice and celebration.

My eyes are focussing any more so I am going to take the hint and go to bed.