dis-integrated

Lately I've noticed a new (or maybe not new, but finally at the head of the line thanks to all of the other things that have cleared out...) feeling about my life.  At first I started saying (in my head and maybe sometimes out loud to a trusted person) that I was living a double life... but the more it showed up, the more I realized I am living a much more varied life than that.

I have so many connections.  So many relationships.  So many things that I love and treasure, but they are mostly separate from one another...  I drew a diagram in my journal this morning (who draws diagrams in their journals?  awesome people.  that's who.) of what I wanted... it ended up being a giant mess of circles and arrows because I was trying to show that I wanted my relationships/connections to have relationships/connections with one another.  The drawing of what I'm existing in now, one circle in the center with unidirectional arrows pointing to the other circles that surround me, is a much prettier drawing... no wonder I've been living in it (comfortably?) for so long.

I long for connectedness, but I have connectedness...  really what I long for is integration.  I long for a tribe.  I want the people I love to love one another.  I want us all to live on a circular street with homes that all face each other and pop in and out casually with news and pies and seedlings and...  yeah, I guess I want to live on a commune...  Truthfully, I don't care if there is a street or homes or pies...  I just want the people and the space and some comfort.

In previous versions of my life I felt like I was a part of something...  but it was someone else's something.  I have been a member of many groups, but they've always been someone else's groups.  There's something appealing about that too... getting absorbed into a group that already exists... there's something very lonely about it too (sometimes).  I've also lost myself in these somethings and these groups.  I've given enormous amounts of time and emotional energy being a part of somethings and groups that weren't my heart's true desire... and to which an authentic version of me didn't really belong.

So, as you've read, I started a journey to discover my authentic self... and honestly, she wasn't that hard to find.  The first 6, 7, 8 months of this journey have been mostly enjoyable.  Now that I'm her, however, and am having to try and figure out how to remain her and live as her adding in all of the things that are real about life... it's way super awful painful rotten a lot of the time.  And that doesn't feel authentic... even though it is... or at least it may be...  so that's confusing.

me.

I've identified that I seek integration...  that I have a life I love in thousands of millions (okay, maybe 50 something... I exaggerate) of disjointed parts.  They are not integrated.  They are dis-integrated.

Disintegrated... hey, that's already a word!  (this is a conversation I had with myself)  Hmmm... what does disintegrated mean?  It's when something has fallen apart... it's crumbled... it's gone from solid to liquid (no wait, that's dissolved)... it's when you become one with the earth again (no, that's decomposed) it's from being a whole to being many millions of parts and almost seeming not to exist.

And yeah, that's what happened.  I was a whole, but not the whole I was supposed to be, so I had to disintegrate to start to identify my own ingredients as individual parts.  Now it seems like it's time to start deciding which ones make up the next version of whole...  Does anyone have a recipe I could borrow?

i will wear sweatpants on a date... i will?

 I just got out of the bathtub.  I've been home since 3:00 (because Spiderman peed on a tree on the playground with a couple accomplices at school and I was called and asked to come get him...  We have been over the guidelines for "nature pee" before.  *sigh*) and BFO picked Spiderman up at 4 today so I had some unexpected extra time to myself and I treated myself to a long, fragrant soak.

It's been a long time since I've written anything about sweatpants and since I don't have a lot to say about life today it seems like a good topic.

Devon is on her way over in a little bit and I'm currently wearing sweatpants...  I'm not sure if I have any intentions of changing before she gets here either.  I do have intentions of making kale chips before she gets here though, and that is something I'm committed to.

It's an odd dilemma (which it turns out I don't know how to spell.  I tried dilemna, dillema, dillemna... before I got to dilemma.  Why do I think dilemma has an 'n' in it?), if it is a dilemma at all.

Reasons why it is probably okay to wear sweatpants on a date:

oh dear. 

1. It's date 30 (yes, I'm counting... and yes, there's a reason, and I'll tell you when I can) and we're staying in to watch a movie
2. She doesn't care about things like that
3. I'm really only wearing sweatpants because it's the next best thing to being naked and being naked would certainly be an okay option...

Reasons why it probably isn't okay to wear sweatpants on a date:

1. come on, what are you... a slob?

Oh my!  Maybe it is a dilemma!  My inner critic seems to think so.  What's funny is that my inner critic would be completely satisfied with me changing into sweatpants after she arrives... so what's the problem with opening the show in sweatpants?

Oh inner critic, you're such a pain in the ass sometimes...

Maybe I'll wear an apron...  that seems cute enough to cut the edge of the sweatpant debacle.

Stay tuned next week to find out if I changed or not!

Kale chips are calling!

the adventure of... um... i got nothin'.

We're having a long, hot what is probably a very typical summer here in Los Angeles (wait, are any of you reading not from Los Angeles... hold on.  I'll be right back...
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...okay, I'm back.  With an announcement.  This week this blog has had 24 page-views from Latvia.  Welcome people of Latvia!  Let's get back to it).

Anyway.  Us SoCal folks have this belief that summer is over in September (probably because of the fall equinox and how connected we all are to our hippie dippie roots here on the west coast)...  I know I always spent the first several weeks of school as a kid soaking my new fall clothes with sweat because I wanted to wear the ribbed tights, turtleneck sweaters, and corduroy pants despite the temperatures in the 90s and up.  "Beauty is pain," I told my mother.  I still tell myself that on those occasions when I accidentally apply mascara to my eyeball instead of my eyelashes.  Sometimes my depth perception ain't too good.

So, we all start whining when it's still too warm after labor day to start wearing scarves and boots (we do this when it hits approximately 68 degrees farenheit, by the way)... and continue to whine all the way through the month of September and into early October.  It will finally start to cool a bit in mid October, but it will always heat up one more time for good measure right around Halloween.

I don't mean to be blogging about the weather, although it does seem to be going okay, right?

Besides that it was 102 degrees in Glendale (a suburb? of Los Angeles where I was seated in a training room with 21 other people and no air conditioning all day) yesterday... my phone has also been hot enough to fry an egg on for the last couple of days.  I used my lunch break today to make a quick run to the Apple store (do you hear the chorus of mocking laughter?  no, it wasn't quick... I was late getting back from lunch.  I should be punished.) for a consultation with a "Genius."

As google said he would, the "Genius" deemed the phone irreparable, and under warranty, and swapped it out with a brand spanking new one.  As I was sitting at the Genius bar, waiting for my phone to restore from its iCloud backup so it could be activated and I could get back to work (because it was getting late!  tick tock!  tick tock!) I started to complain (internally...  my pulse jumped a few paces higher, my neck and shoulders started to tense, my breathing got shallow) about how long it was taking when all of a sudden... WOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH!  Instead of being in a complaining body, I was swimming in a wave of gratitude.

And I didn't do anything to bring it on.  I didn't think to myself "self, you're really complaining about some first world problems here... how about you be grateful for this free new phone that is way more than any human actually NEEDS and get on with your day."  Nope.  The gratitude was automatic.  My body relaxed, my breathing deepened again, I felt pleasantly sleepy (I think they call that peaceful), and I had vivid images of all the people and things I love behind my eyeballs...

you know what this means?!  you know all the "triggers" and "programs" and "automatic responses" like judgment, and defensiveness, and fear that show up and cause me grief all the damn time because my sweet brain is trying to protect me from hurt and is very literal and quite simple in her approaches...  well, I think what this means, ladies and gentlemen, is that gratitude is becoming a program.

Anxiety, instead of being the baseline/protective state, was the distress... and gratitude is what my brain delivered (all on its own!  no prompting from me!) as the remedy.

go brain!

Let's have a party!

woot!

it is what it is

the phrase "it is what it is" keeps showing up in my life...  and although the people of urban dictionary seem to believe that it translates to "fuck it," i'm going to give the buddhist angle a little more weight when it shows up for me.  so yeah, it is what it is...  in the following contexts:

but it probably wasn't what you thought it was...

it is what it is, and not what it "should/could" be
it is what it is, and there's nothing to do about it

it isn't what it is, however, when what it appears to be is all negative and nasty and stuff...  and that shows up in my life a lot too.

it's no secret that i've been in a fair bit of distress for most of the last 7 weeks...  Spiderman's kindergarten issues hit me hard and fast and, not being prepared for this transition in our lives to be painful, I quickly reacted by doing everything possible to avoid the pain.  I judged myself, him, myself, the school, myself, other parents, myself, other students, myself...  I attempted to distance myself from him, myself, the school, myself, other parents, myself, other students, myself, my support system, myself...  I tried denial... I tried anger... I tried begging, pleading, and bargaining (holy moly, I'm describing the stages of grief.  gotta look into that more!)...  When I made my way back to acceptance I found that there was still pain there.  He was still having a rough time, and that hurts.  And reuniting with that pain (unchanged by anything I tried to do in response to it) showed me that most of what I've been doing lately has been in an attempt to stop feeling it.

Oh shoot.  Have I been doing that?

      Yep.

I've been motoring a vehicle (my body.  my body is the vehicle in this analogy) fueled by adrenaline.  I have been disconnected from my instincts and intuition.  I have believed terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things about myself.  I have believed terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things about my situation...

Well, that's gotta stop.

      Yep.

and that's where the work begins...  hooray!  where the work begins is a much preferable place to be than any of the other spaces I've been occupying.  the thing is...  all that avoidance is tiring.  It doesn't exactly set a person up to be well rested and resilient and feeling ready to face her demons.

but... it is what it is.

time to get to work!  (and find my way back to me in the process--and i'm looking forward to it!  yay!)

maybe a quick nap first?

     NO!

okay, okay.  kidding... kidding...