I keep having this sinking feeling. It happens when I question what I'm doing, how I'm spending my time in a given moment. I wonder, is this what I should be doing right now? what would be the best thing I could do with my evening? 

by setting up the question as "the best thing", I'm approaching myself in a very all-or-nothing way. either I am doing the best thing or I'm not. there's success or failure, nothing in between.

I feel really stressed when I approach myself this way, as if my worth as a person is on the line. I feel scared. what if I don't pick the "right" thing? 

and yet, I've been discovering that there's not one right answer for each moment.

what?!

I don't know why, but it's SO hard for me to let go of the idea that there's one right thing to be doing at any given moment.

I remember my dad had this little question taped to his adding machine which sat next to the computer while I was growing up: is this the best use of my time right now? I would read that question over and over again, convinced I was not using my time in the best way. AND, I had no clue how to figure out what the best use of my time would be. everything seemed not important enough.

I entertained these fantasies of greatness, of profoundly meaningful activity, and life just seemed so anti-climactic in comparison. nothing seemed worthwhile.

I still fall prey to the siren song of "greatness" . . . the idea of some shellacked, frozen "perfection", some ideal of eternal virtue completely cut off from the messiness of life. I still struggle with nothing seeming worthwhile.

hello, depression! 

or perhaps, hello, human condition . . .

I wonder about eastern ideas of enlightenment, western ideas of transcendence. so many ideas can be bent to dichotomous thinking where the body/mind and everyday experience are bad, while the dis-embodied spirit/soul soars to some perfect union with the divine.

which is ironic, because the places where I actually find God are in the details. in art that speaks to me. in the way hair falls across someone's forehead.

it's a mindset I want to cultivate: to see God's presence everywhere. to experience God in the ordinary.

wow, I've totally calmed myself down, but now it's time to go back to work and the prospect is intensely unappealing. I feel the familiar tension rising: it's time to work and focus and it all seems so unimportant. there's so much to do, where do I start? what is the "best" use of my time? perfection haunts me.

I have this idea that if I'm not perfect, I'm going to get fired, that I'll lose my job, that I won't be able to get another one. SCARY. more either/or.
 

I am so grateful tonight. Grateful I had my husband in my life for the time I did. Grateful I'm emerging intact from the grief of losing him. Grateful for my house. Grateful for my kitties. Grateful I get to move on. Granted, I never wanted to say that, but here I am.

I feel like I've turned a corner on the grief. I cried massively and profoundly on Friday the 6th after finishing Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult. [Spoiler alert] The main character Cassie realizes she has to divorce her abusive husband, even though it will hurt her so much because she loves him. Looking back, I realize this was a foreshadowing of the conclusion I came to in therapy on Wednesday the 11th. But before we get to that, Tuesday the 10th I chatted on Facebook with a friend from Diana's Grove who was on [ex-husband]'s Rites Team, someone I don't think I'd talked with since Rites weekend 2001. As I told her about losing [ex-husband], I mentioned I've thought about having a funeral for him over the years, but have never done it. That night, I did a tarot reading about "[ex-husband]'s funeral." I cried so hard. Journaled a lot. Got a LOT of information about what it means to me to say good-bye to him, to who he was to me.

The next night in therapy I may have cried harder about losing [ex-husband] than I ever have. I said out loud a lot of things I've hardly let myself think, even though they were true for me. Stuff about not wanting to accept that he's really gone.

Except there's this surreal experience where my ex has made a reappearance in my life. So he's not gone. He's changed . . . . he's . . . *she*.

He's changed.
He's changed.
He's changed.

Damn him, he went and changed on me. I did NOT want to accept that. I just didn't want it to be true, you know?

But if it is true (and it sure as heck is),

I want to change, too.

I don't want to be the one who is still pining away for someone who hurt me so much. I don't want to be committed still to someone who hurt me so badly. I don't want to still be in love with someone who changed on me the way he did.

None of this coming out quite right.

Tonight, my chest still aches and the tears are hot and fat running down my neck. Well, they were hot on my face anyway. Kinda cool pooling in my collarbone.

I took my rings off. I no longer want to be in a committed relationship with him.

This is huge. And heart-breaking. And heart-mending.

Heart-respecting and heart-soothing.

Looking at my wedding pictures tonight, I could sense how I've changed, maybe not in specifics, but I can sense it. I'm not the woman who married him.

It doesn't make sense to me, but I don't want to go back to how things were. I can't. I'm not her anymore.

I don't love him anymore.

It's hard not being that person anymore. I liked loving him.

I liked having him love me. But he stopped, damnit.

So I'm stopping, too.

Still sad. But grateful to be coming out on the other side. Finally.

Rejoice with me.

http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/allsigns.html


Describing my writing, one critic said that I was "like a mutant love-child of Anais Nin and Jack Kerouac." That also happens to be an apt description of the spirit you should bring to life in the coming weeks. So be like the memoirist Anais Nin: a collector of secrets, a connoisseur of intimacy, a fiercely sensitive alchemist who knows her own inner terrain better than anyone else knows their inner terrain. And also be like the novelist Jack Kerouac: a free-wheeling, fast-talking, wide-open traveler in quest of the spirit as it makes its wild plunge into matter.







"Obstacles are a natural part of life, just as boulders are a natural part of the course of a river," notes the ancient Chinese book the I Ching. "The river does not complain or get depressed because there are boulders in its path." I'd go so far to say -- this is not in the original text, but is my 21st-century addition -- that the river gets a sensual thrill as it glides its smooth current over the irregular shapes and hard skin of the rocks. It looks forward to the friction, exults in the intimate touch, loves the drama of the interaction. Sound like a pleasure you'd like to cultivate, Leo? It's an excellent time to try it.







Please don't wear a t-shirt that says what I saw on the canary yellow t-shirt of the Japanese tourist at JFK airport: "Sorry, I'm a loser." I also beg you not to read Ethan Trex's book How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself. It's very important, in my astrological opinion, that you not demean or underestimate yourself in the coming days. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that you have a sacred duty to exalt your beauty and exult in your talents. Now go read Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, and periodically murmur the first line all week long: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself."






Here's to ~
~ knowing my inner terrain
~ plunging my spirit into matter
~ exulting in the pleasure of interacting with obstacles
~ celebrating myself

had a fabulous evening with my dear friend who moved away from St. Louis two and a half years ago. she was in town visiting her parents. she's dealt with anxiety more than I have (depression is more my forte) so I asked her how she copes. she's not even on medication at this point. here's what we came up with:

* take breaks - for water, hot tea, bathroom
* remind myself it's not too late, I still have the afternoon, the next hour, the next 15 minutes
* keep a notebook of accomplishments
* remind myself that I'm still lovable and OK
* acknowledge that yes, I feel ashamed and yes, I feel scared, and that's OK
* refrain from badgering myself to stop-feeling-scared-already! 
* do work that's manageable
* break hard tasks into small steps
* see if I can just start responding to a difficult email, and see how far I get
* bring a mug I like to work for tea
* bring lemon and mint tea to work (right now I think I have decaf green and chamomile there - green tea is not comforting (to me) and chamomile relaxes me - maybe chamomile would be good - hmmm - just don't want to get sleepy)

other ideas:
* get plenty of sleep
* take enough food for lunch including fruit or veggies so I don't get hungry in the late afternoon
* take stretch breaks
* listen to music while working

the anxiety has gotten "worse" (possibly just more noticeable) since my depression is less problematic since I started using my bright light regularly. my depression has always had some roots in anxiety. Paxil was a good drug for both depression and anxiety when I was on a really low dose of it. however, I think it exacerbated my hypomanic (bipolar) tendencies, and it causes weight gain.

the S.A.D. light is helping so much with the depression, maybe I can reduce my dose of wellbutrin.

skywind8 wrote a great comment on my last post. here are some thoughts in response to her comments.

 I especially appreciateskywind8's confidence and clarity about wanting to attract male attention. due to my abuse history, I still feel ambivalent about that.

skywind8's points about dressing well for work are helpful to me, too. in the face of cultural norms about beauty, part of me wants to protest them by being not- beautiful, and another part of me wants to use those norms to my best advantage. but I think what I really care about most is being myself, who I believe is fundamentally beautiful, even in culturally-normative ways. it may look like I am exploiting my attractiveness to my advantage, but that's not my fundamental intention, and so what if it is?

I have a lot of ambivalence about competition. our culture is based on competition, so part of me feels it is in my best interest to compete with every advantage I have. another part of me wants to protest the paradigm of competition . . . and the only way I can think of to do that is to *not* compete, to specifically not use my potential attractiveness by not playing up my looks. but that sucks, too, because then I'm not taking care of myself, loving myself. maybe it's a matter of forgetting about the competition, as it will happen whether I try to participate or resist, and instead step into being who I want to be in the world, regardless of how that will set me up to compete.

I have this hunch that being myself is ultimately the most competitive thing I can do, and yet, I bet it won't matter to me one bit the extent to which I am succeeding according to that external, societal scale, if I remain focused on stepping more deeply into myself. that will be its own reward.

I've received several comments on my posts about how weight isn't a factor when it comes to partner (vs. friend or family) relationships. I've found myself reacting with skepticism to these comments - and wondering why I don't harbor the empowering and seemingly enlightened perspective that weight is irrelevant in the realm of partner relationships. my thoughts are really ambivalent on this topic.

on the one hand, I want to be loved unconditionally, exactly as I am, no holds barred, no caveats.

politically, I am very pro-fat-acceptance. I have huge issues with thin-privilege and institutionalized size-ism. I hate that so many women and girls and men and boys hate their bodies.

and.

in my experience, with my own body, when I am gaining weight, I am eating emotionally and not exercising, i.e., I am not loving my body. heck, I'm not even loving myself, truth be told.

I have a hard time feeling lovable when I'm not loving myself.

and I think it makes sense that I'd have a hard time envisioning myself in a loving partner relationship when I don't see myself as lovable.

this may seem twisted but I'm figuring the most loving thing I can do for myself right now is give myself permission not to love myself. it's honest and it's real. and yes, I feel sad about it. it's painful.

I imagine it's painful to watch, too. to read about or to witness as a friend or family member. I'm tempted to apologize for that, but I don't actually feel like I need to make amends. it's part of me trusting that the people in my life care about me - and part of that is bearing witness to the whole of me, even when it's painful.

there's a grace in seeing someone where they are, even if it takes me to uncomfortable places.

there's a grace in seeing myself where I am, even if it's painful.

I tried on clothes today. clothes that were much too small for me a year ago. I made a pile of clothes that are too big for me now, that will be donated to a local women's shelter. I have a whole new wardrobe.

it's surreal. a bunch of the clothes I tried on, in my search for ones that fit, were too small still. I looked really fat in them. feeling and looking fat seem counter-productive to me. for all I want to believe "fat is beautiful," that's not what I feel when I look in the mirror. I don't hate my body, but I don't revel in its beauty either. I feel kind of warm and fuzzy towards my body. not hating my body - that rocks. it's huge, not hating my body, that is.

interestingly, I'm realizing I don't hate myself either. I do feel kind of apathetic towards myself. neutral. better than hating myself. much better.

I want to feel beautiful again at some point. I feel like that's a shallow thing to want, but it's tied up for me with feeling lovable. and feeling beautiful feels much more attainable than feeling lovable. dang, I feel guilty for wanting to feel beautiful. it feels like capitulation to the enemy, the fat-hating patriarchy. and I'm realizing it's tied up in wanting to feel superior. yuck.

I want there to be a way to feel beautiful, feel lovable, feel powerful, that isn't about privilege and I don't think it's possible. that I even sit here and wonder about these things has everything to do with how freaking privileged I am - as white, as american, as wealthy, as employed, as prep school- and college-educated.

I think that's it for tonight.

thank you, everyone, for your comments - really helpful and supportive - I appreciate you!

what satori (on xanga) said about married and single women being treated differently is so true and I hadn't thought about it so specifically. the larger public does this, as well as, my family really butts into my life a lot more when I am single, and conversely, respects my privacy and my decisions more when I'm partnered. so wacky.

I wore my rings on my right hand yesterday and today. It felt more comfortable with people who know me. But I've put them back on my left hand now that I'm home by myself. So it's just interesting how in flux I am about this right now. It feels so good knowing that whatever I do is OK. thank you again for all your support in this regard.

I've also had one more ambivalence which I didn't expect. I've been feeling self-conscious about how expensive they are. like, do I really want several thousand dollars tied up in a shiny rock? my feelings about money have changed a lot this past year as I've completed the first year of my credit counseling program and learned how to live within my means. money has become so much less of a crutch for me. I've had to figure out how to cope without using money as a band-aid or even a solution. it was easy for me to think that money could solve everything - even if it was for "good causes" like therapy or personal growth workshops - and I'm learning that life doesn't have to work like that. it's not like I'm bereft of resources just because I don't have as much spending money, i.e., there are a lot more resources available to me that aren't financial. at the same time, I'm very grateful for the money I do have. I feel like my priorities about money are so much better clarified than they were a year ago. I used to be scared of not having "plenty" of money, but I've learned that I can cope with much less than I thought I could. it reassures me that if I had to make do with even less, I bet I could do it. it's a very empowering feeling.

I'm feeling conflicted wearing my wedding rings. I keep thinking, "You're weird. Don't you know your marriage is over? What do you think, that wearing them is going to bring him back?" Then I keep wondering what other people think about me wearing my rings: lame? weird? stuck in the past?

To be honest, I am stuck in the past. I can't seem to let go. So, for now, I'm not going to. I'm going to be sad and clingy. I'm going to miss [husband]. I've been sleeping a lot. This morning I thought, I just want to die, too. I'm not feeling suicidal, though, just really sad that he's gone.

Last night I thought about how much easier it was for me to experience my sadness (or whatever emotion) about something when I had [husband] there holding me, listening to me, wanting to help make things better. It was like I had a safety net. I knew I'd make it through even if things were really bad, that I wouldn't just keep falling and falling into an abyss of despair. I knew the sadness wouldn't suck me under like quicksand.

Despite all my ambivalence, I love wearing them. I keep looking at how pretty they are. I feel elegant, grown-up, like I belong.

I also feel protected. This may sound strange, but part of me really doesn't want to get involved with someone new. I still haven't lost enough weight for this to be likely, but it feels like an immense relief that I could protect myself from a new relationship by wearing my rings. Reminds me how ambivalent I feel about starting a new relationship. I may have written about this before. I told my psychiatrist that I am starting to get a little nervous about losing more weight because then I'll be more attractive and I might get into a new relationship and then I might get hurt again. He pointed out that any relationship worth having carries the risk of getting hurt. I took that to mean that if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with someone else, that opens us up to getting hurt.

There is definitely a bit of me that is engaging in magical thinking. If I just wear these rings, my old life will return.

I wish it were that simple.

and speaking of support, I got new bras that actually fit today!