Available

At work, we are supposed to be answering phones, whether they ring or not. Peak season is coming up. Things are about to get crazy. When you look at your phone, if you are not a call, it should say “avail,” which is short for “available.”

I have been thinking a lot about that word lately. I tried to be supportive of Barry’s sobriety all our marriage. I always wanted to be helpful of the good stuff: meetings, his relationship with his daughter, his working at General Motors, etc.

Then there was my dysfunctional family of origin and I did what I could to not be anywhere around when gross stupidity was being committed. I already got blamed for things I had nothing to do with. I didn’t need people thinking I was involved in illegal activities. I wanted to be as unavailable as possible to moronic goings-on.

Now I want to be available to my friends. I have always had the firm belief that someone needs to be sane. We might have to take turns, but the world does not work if everyone is on their last nerve. Someone, somewhere, needs margin, a space between themselves and the wall of their tolerance. A space created by meditation, living below one’s means, being well-rested, that kind of thing.

I once saw a book that intrigued me about black women using rest as a form of resistance. I’m not sure I understand it, but it resonates. It made me want to run out and buy a pillow and blanket for some over-stressed black lady that I never met. No human can be strong all the time. We all need a break.

I have come to the conclusion that availability is kind of like embodiment: we all embody something and we are all available to something. I see young people available to the winds of social media and embodying social justice causes. I see older people embodying their racist ideals and available to other kinds of entertainment.

What are you trying to embody? What are you available to? Is it really worth your time and energy? Are you sure?

Set Myself Free

I am heartbroken and relieved. Funny how those two things go together so often.

I work in a certain place. My best friend, A, and I have a mutual friend/acquaintance, B. B works a different shift than I do, but only three cubicles away. She works morning and I work evening. B has missed a lot of time. She has been sick. And her diabetes has been out of control. She wants to switch shifts, to mine. My boss has not volunteered to accept B. I am not in the loop. I play no part in the decision-making process.

So what does this have top do with me? Exactly. Except A insisted in talking to me about B. And then she gave me a nasty attitude. My thought? “I’m out.” In other words, she insists on us talking about B and then makes me live to regret it.

Once I made the decision to not talk about B with A, I felt a million times better. If this means the end of our friendship, it will break my heart, but no relationship is worth being put in the middle of dysfunctional crap like this. Period. Ever. This is non-negotiable. I did not realize how heavily this situation was weighing on me until I refused to bear the weight one more minute. It reminded me of REO Speedwagon’s song, “Time For Me To Fly.” “I’ve got to set myself free. That’s just how it’s got to be. I know it hurts to say good bye, but it’s time for me to fly.”

How long can I avoid my best friend in the whole world? At the very least, until some resolution occurs in the B situation: my boss welcomes her aboard, B gets used to getting up at 4 am, B quits, or B gets fired. The resolution is not mine to make. I can only take a wait-and-see perspective.

If the question is how long I can avoid toxic/dysfunctional situations, the answer is simple: FOREVER. The price of admission to my family of origin is the pretense that my brothers are not alcoholics, a price I am unwilling to pay in this lifetime or any future lifetimes to come. If I have to live in denial-land to have relationships, I always, 100% of the time, prefer to be alone. It breaks my heart. Part of me dies when I realize that I am seriously expected to say or do things I think are unhealthy (or illegal, in the case of my brothers!) to even pretend there is a genuine relationship.

Here is what I hope happens. B starts taking care of her health and starts working on my shift. She keeps her job. A apologizes for her pissy attitude and actually explains what was going on because it was at her insistence to talk about B with me, a reluctant participant.

Here are some more probable options. B never takes care of her health and becomes unemployable (because no employer wants someone unreliable). B will likely have to start a claim for disability and few people win on the first go-round. A remains angry and never explains her attitude problem. I stay at my job as long as I can. I have issues with my hearing and am awaiting an amplifier as an accommodation. I feel like I am doing an adequate job right now and am making good money. I paid off my car. This may not be what I want to be doing five or ten years from now. I am a valued employee because, in part, I have missed no time. They can count on me. It is that simple.

This situation reminds me of something that happened thirty years ago. Barry and I went to Frandor all the time and particularly to the bookstore. We loved it. I was an evangelical at the time and going to a super-conservative church. Barry and I went to Frandor on Saturday. The next day, at church, this total stranger asked me, “Who was that man I saw you with at Frandor yesterday?” My answer? “Oh, you mean my husband?” After almost having become a Mormon, I was very paranoid about joining a cult. My thoughts were, “Are they keeping tabs on me? Did I accidentally join a cult? What the hell? Barry and I can’t go to the bookstore without me getting grilled about it the next day?” That’s when I decided that, as much as was in my power, I would keep the spheres in my life separate: friends, church, school, work, and family. Zero overlap. Friends and work are a no-go. Any insistence on the mixing of the spheres will result in me either finding a different job or new friends. My decision thirty years ago was correct and still stands, as much as things are in my power.

I have limited control in this situation. I am doing the best I can. But I refuse to be sucked into dysfunctional drama. Been there, done that, torched the tee shirt.

Feeling Stuck?

I have been reading this book, Touching Enlightenment by Reginald Ray, and it is so good. Page 158 says, “The more we avoid, the more we simply recycle our habitual patterns of avoidance and remain trapped in a lifeless and disembodied bardo, in which nothing can happen.”

What part of that is hard to understand? We all know, even if only subconsciously, what needs to be dealt with. We can endlessly distract ourselves. That’s fine. We all do it. Watch TV. Surf YouTube videos. Scroll and swipe. Whatever. But that stuff we don’t deal with goes nowhere, like dirty dishes sitting in the sink. Do you need to deal with all your issues right now, this minute? Not at all. But they’re not going anywhere, either. What’s worse is that the stuff awaiting our attention can start to attract its own vermin, like the ants attracted to the food remaining on the dishes.

There are two main aspects of karma, which simply translates into “action.” First, there are the issues of today, created by yesterday’s actions. And second, there are today’s actions creating unforeseen consequences for the future.

Everything is continually seeking resolution. This is not a comfortable process. The resolution being sought is for us to feel whatever we avoided feeling in the past. Where we choose not to feel or process emotions, they get sublimated into our subconscious and translated into physical symptoms. We go numb and then nothing changes in our lives because we are not processing anything. Because we are numb, we are not really living our lives. To be numb is to not live on any meaningful level. We have trapped ourselves in a dead world. And the clock is ticking. Eventually, we will die, without ever having fully lived in the first place.

The way out of this living death? Meditation, therapy, healing, in other words. Rescuing those abandoned feelings.

Healing in Layers

I have been pushing through at my job. I don’t know how well I have been doing from an objective perspective, but I have been getting good feedback and I am EXHAUSTED.

I have been determined to deal with my issues openly and honestly. I decided when Barry passed that my life would be about me and I was determined to deal with my issues so that they don’t somaticize on me. I am at an age where any and all unresolved issues manifest as physical symptoms, sometimes so literally that it is hilarious. Have a UTI? Who are you pissed off at? Nose snotty? What aren’t you mourning? Sore throat? To whom can’t you speak up? So literal. These are not metaphors. And they are so fast.

This is what I believe now: These issues are not just my personal karma. I am now cleansing layers of family crap. Every single little problem I address gives me great rewards, but also wipes me out. I have been tired lately on a level that I barely believe. I feel like I could sleep all the time. I have been resting a lot. I feel like I am making huge progress and I am either coming alive or physically dying or perhaps both.

I am trying to be gentle with myself. I have a tendency to push, push, push, which does not always achieve anything good. Perseverance is masochism if the goal is not worthy. And keeping a clear head while exhausted is not always possible.

I am uncertain I want to keep this job for two or three years, but I do know that I want to keep addressing these issues and making progress. Once I get good at this job, perhaps it will be time to move on. I hope I will know.

Dealing with Overwhelm

I have started a new job. I have been in training. I have been getting deluged with information.

I am just now coming up for air. Not a joke.

I am training to answer questions for people calling about passport confusion. I do not work for the federal government, but for a company that contracts with a company that contracts for the federal government.

On Friday, I took my ten calls and I will find out this week if I certified. If not, I get two more chances.

The point? It’s been a while since I have been this continually overwhelmed. I have had to meditate, do my Crappy Childhood Fairy Daily Practice, deep breathing exercises, you name it. You lean on what works.

Is this job my dream job? Not necessarily. But I like the pay and it’s okay for now. I finally feel like I have more choices. It’s a good feeling. It’s the opposite of feeling stuck. I have gone through some things and I had the distinct feeling that I needed to go through these things, regardless of outcome.

I am pushing forward. Part of me is exhausted, but now I have the tools to take care of myself–maybe for the first time ever.

Never Handled Anything This Well

I’ve been meditating and getting my nervous system regulated. I realized that I have spent my entire life in one long panic attack. When I was young, there was no vocabulary for this. Everyone has fears and my behavior had no recognized labels back then. It wasn’t until my fifties that I found out about trauma (CPTSD specifically) and how I could feel more normal. Everything has always overwhelmed me. That sounds like such an exaggeration, but it is not at all. Now I recognize the first signs of overwhelm and can do something about it.

I found a new job, but haven’t started it yet. But I gave notice at my old one and had a downright positive experience of leaving. That has never happened. It was not traumatic in the slightest. I was even told I could come back if the new one didn’t work out. (It is temporary and I am more interested in impressing the temp agency than in landing a spot with the potential permanent employer.) I even hugged the store manager before I left. I am not kidding. It was not traumatic. There was no shame. I did what was right for me, freely yet with care. I respected everyone and was respected in return. This has never happened.

Meditation works. The Crappy Childhood Fairy works. Developing friendships works. I don’t know what will happen at the new place, but I handled things totally differently. I still don’t know what will happen, but, for once, I am okay. Finally.

New Awarenesses

I am in a strange situation. My level of awareness is increasing. I am noticing things I never did before.

Here’s the issue: are the things I am noticing actually new or have they been happening all along without my paying attention? The question is important. Is this a new reality that I need to address or has this thing never been important enough to notice for good reason?

I guess I am talking about other people’s behavior. As I become more aware of myself, I am more likely to recognize that exact same behavior in someone else. I’m not talking about projection, which is what we all do when we are unaware of something in ourselves and can’t deal with it. It’s more like, “Wow. This person does that, too. I know it had bad consequences for me. Should I speak up or is it none of my business?” I generally go with the “none of my business” assumption.

It’s a little like having x-ray vision. You see what’s happening and you know what’s likely to happen, but it’s not very empowering. I simply try to protect myself from the consequences of the newly-noticed behavior. Maybe it’s part of getting older. I’ve done more stupid things than you and, so when you do them, I take note (and possibly cover). My hope is that, when people see me taking self-protective measures, people will inquire. However, usually they are at that lower level of awareness that I have spent much of my life at.

The higher level of consciousness I develop, the less hope I have for the world. It’s going to be tough to solve human-created climate change with a generation living in their parent’s basement, smoking pot, and gambling online. Our entire culture is geared deliberately to be addictive, to help people people avoid noticing their feelings on any level.

I really want to be part of the solution, not the problem, to not traumatize people. But, as they say in the twelve-step groups, “Hurt people hurt people.” It starts with individual healing. Do we even have the time to fix these issues? I sure hope so.

“It’s Complicated”

People are driving me nuts.

I bet I have spent thirty hours in the past week helping a friend sort out a situation in a church I used to go to that she still attends. I am so angry at these people. It all started with the president of the women’s group asking the pastor to fire my friend. He obliged, sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. Emails were exchanged. Lies were told by the pastor. He sent one email to my friend at 3:27am, asking for a private meeting. More emails were exchanged, many of which my friend forwarded to me. She and I have had to sort out what jobs are whose, who has the right to do what, who doesn’t, what is worth doing, what isn’t, what is verifiable by going to the Parish Council, and on and on.

Here’s why I am pissed: What could have been a simple termination for any or no reason by the women’s group president has blown up in everyone’s face. My friend has a very sharp legal mind. She will not be bullied by a lying pastor, especially one that has driven out so many people.

Here’s the crux for me. The truth is simple and takes almost no time to communicate. Interactions may be painful, but they are clean, simple, and brief. The truth can also be verified. No big deal.

What is ridiculously complex are lies and people not taking responsibility for their behavior. One lie compounds the next. Half-truths and all-out deceptions can put people’s jobs at risk. Why the hell is the pastor emailing my friend at 3:27 am? Never mind. The answer is irrelevant because there is no good answer.

I have come to know in my bones that most of my problems came from my parents not taking responsibility for their actions. They didn’t do what needed to be done when it was actually possible. You take a bad situation, add time, and subtract personal responsibility, and what you have is death. Death from cirrhosis, the death of someone’s pastoral career, or the death of trust in a church environment where trust is everything.

The problem with these out-of-control situations is that we responsibility-takers, like my friend and I, get scapegoated. It gets old fast. Someone has to take responsibility, right? And that would be us. We don’t know where our responsibility genuinely begins and ends.

And so I try to be supportive of my friend. And it’s exhausting. I am simply trying to clarify her thinking and to help her sort out this mess. And then I burned out. Not being great with boundaries, I didn’t take good enough care of myself and did not meditate sufficiently. So I told her that I needed to back off from the situation for at least a few days. I desperately need to meditate more. Her sending me emails from the women’s society’s headquarters in Detroit was triggering my issues. I am not blaming her. She is truly being treated like crap by the pastor and his henchmen. I’m trying to do for her what I would want someone else to do for me.

My fury comes from the sheer unnecessariness of the situation. The complexity comes from the BS aspect of the scenario. All of it could have been prevented through mutual honesty, respect, transparency, and accountability. At this point, however, there is no longer any potential for simplicity. When the lies started to flow, things got way too complicated way too quickly. Just like my dysfunctional family, none of this had to have happened. It was not inevitable. It is exhausting to deal with this level of complexity. When people have a problem, they need to come forward themselves, not hide behind someone else.

I try very hard to take responsibility for my own errors and foibles. I am not perfect. But I cannot remember layers of lies. My life may suck at times, but it is oh so much simpler than dealing with this utter nonsense.

(Dis-)Embodiment

When Barry passed, I decided that my life, from that moment on, would be about me. Then I started noticing that I was doing things (that sometimes hurt people) and I had no idea why. Another decision: I’m done running from my feelings. I’m sick of this: of being overwhelmed all the time by the tiniest things, wanting to kill myself over the average disappointments of life, of even being scared to open up my mail.

So I found my psychoanalyst. She introduced me to the arena of trauma. OMG. That’s it. I asked when she thought my original trauma was and she said in utero. I started to realize that I never bonded with my mother. I remember getting lost in Meijer and K-Mart and not caring. My mother did not represent safety to me on any level. Clinging to her accomplished nothing, something I realized in the crib. My left brain developed more than most people’s while I pushed forward in life absent any awareness of feelings. My number one thought in my twenties and thirties was, “This is too much. I can’t deal with this now.” So that emotional integration got pushed to a later date, which has now arrived.

As I meditate and try to integrate my past, I increasingly notice other people’s actions and reactions. I believe that we can recognize in others things we have some (maybe not a lot) awareness of in ourselves.

Sunday afternoon, one of my closest friends freaked out regarding the church service and the behavior of the pastor. Of course, it was on YouTube. I watched it and it was creepy. There he is, on the platform, seemingly wandering aimlessly, going from one area to another and back. He seemed to almost float. I thought, “Can he even feel his feet?” Then the sermon was disjointed, going from topic A to B to C and back again. It seemed a little incoherent. The adjective would be “disembodied.” “Is anyone in the audience seeing what I’m seeing?” I wondered. I felt like someone needed to take him by the arm and lead him off the stage to a room with padded walls. Very odd. I could see why my friend was shaken.

Some context is in order. I went to this church for about a decade. This man was the most careful and meticulous man I have ever met. He measured his words by the eye dropper. He is a linguistic genius, giving the best sermons I have ever heard. Nothing he does is accidental. He almost got transferred once because a different friend of mine was stalking him. It just didn’t look right. Fast forward to now. He refuses any level of accountability and transparency. The church is dying. My friend is demanding answers for some of his more bizarre behaviors. He emails her at 3:27 am, asking to meet privately. I have that email because she forwarded the whole chain of them to me. I have seen better pastors than him lose their jobs over behavior less serious than this. (Without any context, the 3:27 email looks as if he and my friend could have been having an affair, which she then broke off, prompting him to ask for a private meet-up. None of that is true, but a married pastor should never email a single, female parishioner at 3:27 am, looking to get together. Period.) He has bullied almost all the Greeks out. Everyone seems terrified of him. And nobody says anything, even as his behavior devolves.

The reason I asked myself, “Can he even feel his feet?” was because dissociation is my go-to overwhelm response. I recognized myself in him. I had one dissociative episode driving (!) to my psychoanalyst’s office. Thank god for automatic pilot and that my body knew how to drive, but anything could have happened.

I think what my friend is doing has sent him over the edge, perhaps with other unbeknownst-to-me stressors. I haven’t attended this church in over a decade and that’s part of why I recognize the radical change in his behavior. He has always resisted accountability, but now he is so far out of his comfort zone that he has no awareness of himself. Been there, done that.

I had to ask my friend a lot of questions. My ability to see this level of disembodiment is very new to me. Watching the video, I wondered if he had always been that way, but now I was recognizing it for the first time because of my own trauma work. Had he always been like this? No, she reassured me, this was new.

And the people in the pews? Why weren’t they rushing the stage to contain and protect someone in this type of fugue? My suspicion is that they have some version of battered-wife-syndrome. He has beaten them down and they don’t want to “get into trouble,” as if they were three-year-olds. No one wants to upset the apple cart. I suspect most of them don’t care if the church survives anymore because they know they can always take communion in Grand Rapids or Detroit. Protestant churches live or die by their pastors. The Catholic and Orthodox churches…not so much.

Here’s what I want. I have a determination to be available to my friends. I want to be there for them. Also, one reason I haven’t been pushing to find another, better job is that I am spending time trying to integrate my past and meditate. I feel like I am growing quickly and who I am now will not be who applies in six months. I am using my lessened hours as a kind of meditation retreat. I want to be a more useful human on as many levels as possible.

I had another realization today. I was thinking about when I quit Toastmasters in 2008 and I thought, “I can’t deal with this,” and changed the topic in my brain. Wait. I still feel this way? It hit me that I now need to integrate and feel all those feelings relating to every topic in my entire life so I can move forward. All these topics from the past eliminate my ability to move forward. Why was quitting Toastmasters in 2008 so traumatic? Let’s look at that. I was going to school. Barry had just retired. After one whole week of retirement, he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Just about anyone would have been overwhelmed, but my lack of nervous system development made it impossible for me to deal with much of anything in life. Now, the goal is to feel everything and enlarge my capacity to feel (become more embodied) so that I can be of service to my fellow humans. I hope I have enough time left on earth to do so.

Time and “Ancient History”

I have realized lately that time is everything and sometimes it is totally irrelevant.

On the one hand, time is everything. It is all we have and we honestly do not know how much of it we have left on earth. Our birth and death dates are fixed. It is what we do in the middle that matters.

On the other hand, sometimes time is meaningless. If all we are going to do is the exact same thing we did twenty years ago, adding one more day or twenty more years makes little difference. The flip side of this is that healing can be instantaneous, requiring little or perhaps no time. Time, once again, is taken out of the equation.

There can only be urgency if your desire is for meaningful change. I will never forget the profound depression that slapped me in the face when I realized that nothing ever changes until someone, somewhere, takes some level of personal responsibility and does something differently. Life is nothing but the repetition compulsion for many people that are complacent or have no idea that things can actually be different than they are. In the family, there is a deep sense of “that’s just the way things are.” My brothers started drinking as teenagers and I suspect my parents thought it was “just a phase.” This level of resignation is part of my definition of stupidity. Now my brothers are dying of cirrhosis because, in my opinion, my parents took no personal responsibility when they did have authority over my brothers. There was a lot that could have been done back in the day. If you take a bad situation, add time, and subtract personal responsibility, what you are left with is an unsolvable problem and death. It did not have to end this way. This train wreck was avoidable. I will not watch.

I am certain that if I brought any of this up to my parents (which will never happen because I am done with them and have ended contact deliberately and permanently), they would say, “That’s the past. That’s ancient history.” My point in this post is that the past is the present is the future if things have not changed (and they have not). Here is my personal definition of “ancient history”: 1) something happened decades ago, 2) the perpetrator has apologized with a demonstrated understanding of exactly what the apology is for, and 3) the action has never occurred again. In other words, if the apology is insincere or the person is still doing the damaging behavior, it is not “ancient history.” It is “current events.” Bullies want to forgive and forget. Victims demand justice. Justice delayed is justice denied.

I am now in an odd position in my life. I have boatloads of education. I have an MBA, for crying out loud. I intellectually have the ability to do anything I could possibly desire to do. And yet I have been unable to do anything meaningful whatsoever. I know what to do and have been consistently incapable of doing it. WTF? People tell me these common-sense things to do and I feel like, “If I could actually do that, don’t you think I would have done it by now?”

But I know what my problem is: childhood trauma. I never attached to my mother. My right brain did not develop normally. Here’s the issue: the right hemisphere is supposed to develop first (before the left hemisphere and not even “in tandem”). The right hemisphere is where emotional connections are made. Things like empathy, compassion, social awareness, and love are supposed to develop before you develop such qualities as like logic and reason. I once asked my last shrink when she thought my original trauma was. Her response? “In utero.” Makes sense.

To compensate for my right brain inadequacies, my left hemisphere went into overdrive. Even in elementary school, I was ridiculously left-brained. The term today would be “on the spectrum.” When I saw a definition of Asperger’s Syndrome about fifteen years ago, I was stunned. OMG. That’s me. But there wasn’t that vocabulary when I was a kid. The weird physical sensitivities. The rocking when stressed. The social unawareness. I checked all the boxes. In middle school, I watched my brothers do the same stupid behaviors and get the same totally predictable stupid results. They never learned. My Sheldon-like brain could not compute their actions. Anything logical was obvious to me and yet I had no social clue.

Now I have the answers. I have been determined my entire life to understand myself and my family. Al-Anon helped a lot in my twenties. It showed me what boundaries were so I could hope to have normal-ish relationships. I have read a mountain of self-help books. Once again, my left brain took the lead, but I have the resources today to undo most, or maybe even all, the damage caused by early childhood trauma. It starts with meditation. I have come to realize that trauma is not about what happened forever ago; trauma is all about the neurological injury we are left with today and can heal. This is where The Crappy Childhood Fairy, Gabor Mate, Pete Walker, and Thomas Hubl come in.

So here I am. I do not want to meditate. It trips my fears because turning off my left brain feels suspiciously like the infantile abandonment I experienced. But when I meditate, I connect dots and feel a million times more solid, if that makes any sense, and it feels like it happens instantaneously. Meditation and healthy relationships are my only hope of healing myself and becoming of use to others.

And, of course, meditation takes time. And there is nothing more valuable that I could ever do with my time.