3.9.10
Here I am again, sitting pretty in front of the computer, back straight, legs crossed, chair tucked under the console as far as it will go, make-up applied, ready to write. How different today is than yesterday. Than last night when I sat with my goals person for almost an hour, tears pushing to be released, heart broken over my cross in life--my fear. One might say how dare I call it a cross to bear, how dare I compare myself to Jesus Christ, climbing up a hill, cross on his back, dying for our sins. I guess I do see myself as a martyr, a victim, brave in the face of great adversity. I am an expert sufferer.
I have an old friend, someone I've known now for a good fifteen years. Someone I've lived with, fought with, laughed with and cried with. Someone who has berated me and cheered me on. Someone I have disappointed, frustrated, and angered. Someone who I have loved and hated. Someone I have complained about. Someone who I have grown to be careful around, not to fall into her vision of me, not to fight it either, as she is fixed in this vision. And right now that is of poor, pained, dangerously close to suicide me. And I resent it. But I respond to it, because I feel a maternal gush from her when she says "You are amazing. You fall down, you get hit with such pain, and you always get up, you pull yourself up each and every time." And then there is that gnawing sensation in my mind when I listen to her say this that she is right. That she knows this part of me and speaks it, like I rarely do and that very few people in my life do with such accuracy and volume.
But is that me? Am I this courageous sufferer or am I more complex than that? Am I more complicated? Am I healthier than that? Or, no, it is not a question of health, but do I have more of a capacity for peace, love, and enjoyment in myself?
How do I go on from here? Do I tell of my fear? My constant, terror that grips my chest with it's frozen fist and sends icicles darting through my organs, spewing apocalyptic thoughts out of my neurons into my consciousness in the form of angry scenes and gruesome images and little movies that drip with themes of guilt and shame and all add up to an impossibility to stay alive. So that is my fear. And for a lifetime I have been trying to get rid of it. I have become an expert at describing it. I have, early on, mastered the art of manipulation, learning to make my anxious mother comfortable and happy and full so that then she could and would attend to me,make me feel safe. I have charmed doctors and treaters and have been undergone every type of treatment possible to abolish this fear. I have discovered that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Now, middle-aged, I am no less terrified; I just hate myself more that I can't get rid of it.
It sort of goes like this. I'm trying Buddhist meditation. I'm meditating. I know I should just "be in the moment, watch my thoughts, no, woops I shouldn't say no, I shouldn't say shouldn't," I remember my good meditation a few days ago, "I shouldn't judge my meditation, I am attached, don't be attached to an out come." The teacher's voice repeats in my head-"you like some thoughts, you don't like some other's, watch them pass, become awareness." "I can't do it. Oooh! there was a moment." I race to fill it with thought. I can't tolerate an empty mind. The fear wells up in me. I'm relieved. I now know who I am, familiar territory, but now I want to make it go away, still familiar territory. I try to get rid of it by feeling it without thougth. "I'm suffering. See the suffering." I see it for a few moments, then I start analyzing it, putting words to it. "Maybe if I just see it without thought, THEN it will go away. No, that's wrong. That's the opposite of what I should be doing. I want an outcome. I am here to feel peaceful. I need to feel peaceful. I MUST feel peaceful. I can't do this." My frustration level rises. I see myself in my mind's eye screaming and yelling and waving my arms all over the place and jumping up and down. I force myself to stay sitting. I hate this "Kill me or Kill her" my minds spews forth. "Why do I say that? Maybe if I'm quiet the reason will reveal itself" I picture talking to M. about the answer that hasn't revealed itself yet. One day it is revealed to me that shame lies under my guilt; I am on that like butter on bread, analyzing it throughout the day, remembering every humiliation at my mother's hand, seeing myself talk to M. about it. Not wanting to;wanting to keep the knowledge earned by meditation in the meditation. I will tell M. at some point.
My pain is not my fear. My pain is pretending I am not afraid. My pain is stuffing it back down the rabbit hole from which it came. My pain is the edict that I should not be afraid. My pain is my attachment to a life free of terror. I write terror to pathologize it. to make clear to us that it is an illness-to make clear that it is a truth needing acceptance.
I use the dharma (Buddha's teachings) as a weapon against myself. I twist it until it becomes another tool to be cured. But I know better. I know better. I know, among all the mental weeds and overgrowth, well...what do I know? This is tricky. The Four Noble Truths are that 1)there is suffering, 2)there is a cause of suffering, 3)there is an end to suffering and 4)by following the Eighthfold Noble path. It's not tricky. I know it works. I know when I allow myself the moment, when I even allow myself my fear, my attachments to a cure, my sense of impatience and urgency, when I refrain from speaking just to get attention, I feel better. I know that walking out of Dr. M's office last Tuesday I felt better than I did on Friday, despite the fact that we talked about the same thing on both days. The difference was on Tuesday I let the tears flow and we came to the conclusion that I had done something that had changed a relationship and that there are no rules in relationships--in short the truth, albeit a very scary one, but he did nothing to take away my fear. On Friday, I just talked and talked, looking for an answer from him to my dilema at the house. I left feeling tired and overwrought.
Open my arms to my suffering. Practice right speech. Cultivate nonattachment. All of these are good aspirations. Unfortunately I pervert them all into a twisted call for a cure. I might as well be demanding Ativan for anxiety. But to bring this to an end, I know, somewhere, somehow,and at sometimes I experience a little joy. And this is what I would like to tell my long time friend, I am capable of a little joy here and there. And what I would like to tell me is to...I don't know. I guess just enjoy it.
I don't know what to tell myself. That is the authority I must find in myself. What do I want to tell myself--no doctors,teachers, or goals persons. What do I need to tell myself.