Monday, September 26, 2005

home

i'm home.

not knowing that i'd be involved in the ren fest this year, i inadvertantly scheduled this as a vacation day for myself. right now i'm thanking whoever is listening that i did, because i was exhausted. last night, driving home, it felt like i was drunk--hazy vision, wandering eyes. at one point on the highway i had to swerve around someone who braked suddenly in front of me. then dinner with a host of people, and then home, more tired than before i ate. en route, the flash of gray ending in striped tail in my headlights: a raccoon, at seventy miles per hour. the image is frozen in my mind, scampering out of light.

this morning i cleaned my house some--mainly the little duties that i've put off since prior to festival. my grand plan is to smudge, as well. however after complaining loudly about the upstairs closet for the third time to townhome management, the maintenance guys showed up unexpectedly this morning to fix it. huh? a phone call would have been appreciated. they weren't sure if they'd be back yet today or tomorrow morning. so i moved everything out of the closet and hung up all dan's clothes, stacked games, etc.

i listened over and over to the shakespeare's love child cd that was my Big Purchase yesterday for myself--my reward for the last weeks of stress and sleep deprivation, in addition to my little dragonfly mug. love it.

i think about being home and i'm happy to be here, but annoyed and frustrated and overwhelmed. there is so much to do, both in myself, in my relationship with dan, in general upkeep. in the same way that my kitchen floor needed to be mopped, i am feeling neglected. i have allowed myself to slide--not eating right, not taking the time to walk or take my blood pressure--those are the main things. but secondary is all this little stuff, like ironing a few shirts that have hung on my door for over a month now, or giving myself a good pedicure.

i complete the things that appear most pressing to me at the moment, the things that are visible and require change--the floors, the cat box, the closet. i complete these and then i think, i should clean myself, too. i glance out the window and see the bird feeder, and that takes precedence over me actually applying energy to replenishing my own stores.

i always think that i will have time tomorrow. tomorrow i can devote to myself. tomorrow i can paint my toes. tomorrow i can relax in the tub, tomorrow i can start doing yoga again.

i think back to when i was a kid and shopping for a birthday present for someone, and my mother telling me to pick out something that i would like to receive, that by doing so i would be picking out something that my friend would also like to receive.

i realized last night in talking to dan last night at length about self worth that i do the same thing when i'm picking out words, subconciously, to say to others. i say things that i would like to hear, or that i have heard, or that i think will soften an imagined blow. i say these things because i do not put myself first in my own life.

why? why would i do that? i come home to roost in the home that is walls and roof, but i do not come home to roost in the home that is flesh and bone. i stray from this home. i wander in and out. the doors are always open, the windows wide. in summer this allows breeze to blow, but in winter the snow and cold permeate and i am left with damp corners and chapped lips.

why is is that i can take better care of my linoleum than i can my own feet? what is it that is worth more than my own path of joy and sorrow? what is it that is worth more than taking the time to peer inward and shut the windows, and be warm and safe in and of myself?

perhaps it is that in taking on the view of earth, i have come to understand that my life is over quickly. it is made up of moments. the flooring will be here after i am gone. the sky will still be blue and the birds will still come to an empty feeder, to see if it has been filled.

if i am at peace with that ideal, then it becomes suddenly about the rest of the world, and i lose track of the immediate home in which my soul is sheltered, and i make the world around me more worthy of time than me.

in the same breath i can see that if i honor my own spirit and the housing in which it takes cover, then i can better serve the world and people around me. if i do not find worth in myself, how am i to discover it in others?

in finding this view and recognizing it--that i am in the house of air and earth, on which i live inside a house of wood and drywall and wiring, in which i am living inside a house of cells and marrow, and that i am worth honoring--suddenly i feel as though have truly come home.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

the things my father saw

yesterday i had two thoughts running through my head, like separate trains, unaware of each other. i was talking on the phone with my sister, then my mother, then cari. the whole time i was focused on the person with whom i was speaking. then i chatted with dan for a bit, and then hit the pillow.

originally, when i got home, dan was watching tour of duty, a show from the early 90s about a group of soldiers in vietnam. i sat down for a few minutes and had a sandwich before making phone calls and carrying on the things that needed doing.

and all the while, all while carrying on conversations and planning days and finding a pair of capris to wear today--all that while, i thought about the things my father saw, while he was a soldier in the same place.

i thought about his hatred of flies and enclosed spaces. i thought about the years he spent at the bottom of a bottle when he returned, i thought about redemption and forgiveness. i thought about the fact that someone, somewhere, is grieving yet for a family member that was removed from the planet by my father's bullets. i think of my father, grieving for being asked to kill in the name of country. i remember the pain in his voice when we were watching an action movie, once, and my brother was counting the bodies as they fell. "the first time i killed a man, i threw up," he said.

in all honesty, that is something i carry with me, too. perhaps it is the catholic guilt. i think of how tender my father was in raising his children, of caring for my mother. i think of dad, mowing the lawn, working on a car, drinking milk at dinner, and it feels like it cannot be the same man and the same body that for a year walked through jungles overseas, swatting flies and balancing his need to protect with his need to serve. it's hard, to think of your father in that manner.

i know that it must be difficult for a man who values every life and every living thing on earth to think that when someone asked, he did without question. my father is a true patriot, a man who would have given his life for his country willingly and gladly, in the name of protecting that which he holds dear--family, friends, freedom.

i just dwelled for a long time, probably until now, on the things my father saw. i think about the things he saw when he was here at home, and the things he witnessed in green swooping jungle, pressed close to ground. the noise must have been unbearable.

i read a tim o'brien book again recently, "if i die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home." and watching the tour of duty show with dan has cemented this ongoing loop in my brain about the nature of forgiving yourself for things that you have done, things that you may not have meant to do. is there a degree of forgiveness? is there a line that is crossed, at some point? i want to ask him how he can live with himself, when he learned how to do so, but i know that often it is still an ongoing process, and always will be.

personally, i can forgive anything he did, based on the simple fact that he came home. the situation in which those soldiers were put, that any soldiers are put, is one of save your own skin, or that of your comrade--kill or be killed.

i think about all the things i have seen in my short life. i think about my father's being nearly twice as long as mine thus far, the knowledge he carries in his marrow about the life he has lived. i think about all these things and it becomes a story of healing and living, and learning how to do both simultaneously.

the things my father saw include his children being born, slipping a ring on my mother's finger, dancing a polka with my sister--and all these things bring tears to his eyes as quickly as the thought of being in vietnam, and how difficult that was.

does he replay images in his mind, over and over? does he dream about combat boots and the smell of rice paddies, at the same time as he dreams of grandchildren?

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

is there a manual i'm missing?

i often wish that i'd been given some kind of manual on how to approach life. i think back to when i was going to college, etc, or even the on-the-job training i got when i started at adp...and the whole gist of it was that if you couldn't remember information, you still had the book in which the information was written--idea being that you could just go back and re-read the answer, refresh your memory.

but life in general, and how to deal with it, is all stuff that you're supposed to have memorized.

from day one--your behavior towards parents and other people--it's all supposed to be ingrained, something that you don't have to worry about accessing.

sometimes, like today, i hear dan on the phone w/ a friend and he says, well, who knows what's going on...and my immediate thought is akin to "where's the instruction manual for the dvd player?"

who does know what's going on? everyone has a different take on it. everyone has a different perspective. there is no one way to approach anything in life. by and large, it's all based on what you experience day to day. either you learn from it and you keep walking with that knowledge embedded in your brain, or you leave it by the wayside.

but i think generally most folks glean what they can and add to their repetoire. you start out with a lesson on how to deal with someone who's afraid of spiders and you take away from that how YOU deal with spiders, or how to cope with phobias, or something. you forget what to do when someone around you is afraid of spiders; you take from the situation whatever it is that your brain decides to.

so therefore, i feel like i'm missing a manual. i've taken from my life experiences certain things, certain ideas and morals that are my backbone as i wander along. but i often wonder if the knowledge i'm schlepping with me is the knowledge that was intended, or if in some way i have warped the original teaching.

i think back to reading epictetus and marcus aurelius, and how they were focused on the same thing--the philosophy of living, the ideas that shape your life, and how you can shape your own journey. now how diluted has the original idea become--how over time and word of mouth and translator bias even their ideals have perhaps been tilted.

of course, that is taking an epic amount of time into perspective. at the same time, if i compress that time, i think about my own little notebook about how to live my life that's filled with haphazard scribblings, words strung together like a beads, grammar knitted. it's a scrapbook in my mind of how i think other people should be treated, when i should laugh at jokes, why i should reach out my arms and hold someone, and when.

so who does know what's going on? who knows what's best? who knows what's right, wrong, who wrote the manual for life, and in what language was it written? am i missing it, or am i carrying it around, unknown because it is merely thoughts and behaviors that i learned from every relationship i have ever been in? every encounter i've had has left an imprint on my psyche, something that is indelible and more hardy than ink, but changes daily, water warping wood.

is it me? is the answer within? is the answer without--does someone else have the manual? do i peice it together, like the rest of the planet? or do i just have to look through folders and boxes until i come across it, lost when i was younger, translated from english into spanish, korean, german and greek?

Thursday, September 08, 2005

letters

this is an excerpt from a letter than i emailed to dan a while back, during a day of emails. lately our exchanges have become more and more about existensial things and feelings and emotions and stuff--whereas previously it was "so what are we doing for dinner" and mundane household crud.

this day in particular i was having a real theoretical few moments, trying to comprehend and understand and find a metaphor for what was going on in my head and what i thought was going on in dan's head, too.

metaphors, for me, are sometimes an easier and more accessible way of viewing a large and somewhat unruly situation.

so here's the email, cut for length:

*********

anyway, here's how i see it.

everyone has a different key, a different time, a different place, to unlocking the juggernaut of self. eventually everyone comes to this spot where they have to turn their view inward; this is yours. i think that serena was your medium to finding that you needed to.

i keep thinking of like a messy garden. it's there, whether you tend it or not. it's growing, it's dying, it's living, it's thriving--with or without your guidance. suddenly you have been gifted with the key to opening the gate, and look inside--and man alive, you've got a disaster on your hands! everything is out of control, things are growing outside the alloted garden space, weeds have drifted in, you've got a giant sunflower and another tomato plant that you're certain YOU did not plant...

my whole thing is that i was given the key at some point after corey died. i started my journey through my own garden, started trying to understand the weeds and the flowers and all that crap. i didn't get very far because i think i got distracted by something in the garden that i didn't plant there...or many things, or maybe just a shiny watering can...you know how i work.

at the same time, i haven't been stuffing things into my garden and forgetting about them. (; (; nudge nudge...not that i know anyone who HAS been doing that. LOL

i'm sure your garden, aside from the regular stuff, has a few things that REALLY don't belong, like an old model t car,etc. you get the existential idea. yours has been neglected; you're learning how to deal with it. you're going to unearth things from time to time that make you have to stop and see why whatever it is exists, why it's there, if you want to keep it or not, if you need to move it around, etc.

i think the problem isn't that you don't have the strength or the tools, it's that you've never had to have this KIND of strength and you've never used your set of tools.

i think in our collective garden, we haven't paid a ton of attention. mine has been growing all over yours, and vice versa, and we've got stuff in there that we have never considered or expected. i am also dealing with the idea that serena doesn't care. i wrote about that this morning in my blog, about how i need to learn when to walk away, and when to run, etc. but i don't think that i need to run as far as she apparently feels is necessary.

in other words, i feel that she's got the same problem we do, garden-wise. she's ignored a part of her garden, and voila! she still has the same plants there that were there before, with roots just as deep and just as hardy...but personally, i think she's trying to pretend that the gigantic sunflower is really just a daisy.

which as we all know does not work.

i think that she DOES care for you a great deal. i hope that she cares for me, but i'm not sure. i don't think that you are throwing anything away by caring for her, or tearing up our relationship. yeah, i think whatever mutual garden we had is being refigured and weeded, but i think that it is SO much more healthy this way, regardless.

************

that's where we were at then. i know i've had some email breakthroughs since, and so has dan. but it's up to him to sort through if he wants to share more, at this point. LOL i have to constantly keep deleting and such to keep my inbox at work manageable and allow me to actually open up other items like oh...work related emails. LOL

today at work one of my coworkers was let go. it was awkward because the cube walls are like 6 feet high, so if i stand on tiptoes i can see over the tops of them. i don't hear well, what with the deaf ear and all, so i couldn't hear what people on the other side of the wall were saying, but i could hear the noisy whispers.

it's an oxymoron that whispering can be so loud, isn't it?

anyway, i'll miss the coworker who was fired. she was friendly and a hard worker--and you can't ask for much more. of course, she missed a fair amount of work...so i'm sure that was their backup for saying "good-bye"...but the fact remains that we're coming up on year end, which is always so busy, and they let someone with tenure go.

for pete's sake! suspend her for two weeks! give her all the unpaid time off she wants! she shows up more often than not, so who the hell cares? honestly...more people are going to be leaving if they keep this up. besides the fact, with me moving into the conversion department and another associate moving from conversion back to client services, they're going to have 3 people out at the same time having babies!!! michael's wife, karen, and the new girl, maria. on top of that another coworker is going to be a grandma around the same time! at least two people are set on leaving...the word "ugly" doesn't seem to come to mind in what they're thinking. i wouldn't invite anyone onto this sinking ship--because that's what it's becoming, lately.

part of me is not liking the thought of moving into conversion because i know what happens when they get to client services -- they're neglected. there's not enough people or enough hours in a day to keep up and follow through on everything that needs to be kept up to date.

impossible. obviously from the preggers folks, it's not inconceivable.

but ridiculous beyond comprehension? yes indeed.

anyway, i'm off to primp for bed. cheers all and apologies for the epic. (;

Friday, September 02, 2005

what else...

...but the hurricane.

i find it interesting that on such a large scale, we have these kind of problems. is it because mexico and canada haven't sent aid workers? i doubt it. is it because there isn't enough money being tossed its way? nope, they seem to be scrambling for more than enough money. it's humanity that's making this into a disaster following a disaster.

the thing that's preying on my mind as i read about rapes and looting and such is that i don't remember hearing about so much of this type of thing after the tsunami overseas. i remember the death toll rising and rising, but either i've blocked it out or something but i just don't recall reading about this.

does it take a larger natural disaster for people to overcome this behavior? would it have to be tens of thousands killed? why is it that they can loot and pillage and such and not refocus their efforts on removing the dead, finding what they need to survive?

i read in an article that people were looting a wal-greens type store for things that they needed--well fine, TAKE THEM. if you need the bandages, take 'em. i'm sure that your survival is more key than the fact that you're taking it and not leaving a fiver just laying about, and i definitely wouldn't categorize that as looting.

it's the people taking tvs and crap that's looting. there's not even electricity on which to watch the tv.

maybe i've gamed too long. maybe i'm just clinically nuts.

all i know is that if this was a situation that i was facing, i wouldn't want to sit in a football dome and just WAIT. i would want to assist, to do.

organize some of those 10,000 people and have them help with the dead. i seethe at the man who said that he would not leave his dog covered with a sheet, but it doesn't sound as though he's made a move to see if he could help. humans have been taking care of their neighbors since the dawn of time, dead or alive.

i understand that some folks have problems dealing with corpses, and death itself. but out of all those people in that dome, there have got to be a few who are willing to see what they can do.

again with the gaming too long. i keep considering the people who are waiting for aid and food and water--i wonder, because i'm not in that situation, what the local grocery stores look like. are they smithereens, emptied already? if they're not, get a group of people together and go shopping. aid is always flown in, dropped in crates and bags. sometimes i think you have to make your own aid, and businesses have got to have insurance that covers this, don't they? i guess that's a question for dan or other insurance experienced folks.

all i know is i read about this, and i think: the thing that's going to be remembered is not going to be the size of the hurricane or the massive efforts to assist. i have a feeling it's going to end up being the way people acted after the hurricane. yes, it's a natural disaster to have a swarm of wind and water destroy things on land. but i think it's just as much of a natural disaster to have humans who could be helping other humans causing more harm and destruction.

all this said from my living room 1200 miles north. i know i'm not there, i don't have the ability to drop everything and assist physically. but my inner italian grandmother needed to chastise the rapists, the looters, the people who are desecrating the good name that everyone else--all the rescue workers, the national guard, other people who are doing everything they can to help-- have given to humanity.

i'm doing what i can, from this distance: praying.

yes, it's a christian prayer, but i just love st francis.

*************

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

anxiety

so using the theory of coginitive behavior therapy--in which you try to give yourself time to process things both emotionally and logically, instead of allowing your limbic system to run amok--i had a good practice this afternoon, and this morning as well.

perhaps it's just rationalizing and i didn't use it at all. but it helped me stop and think, instead of just blindly hurrying into despair and fear, which is my usual mode of panic.

so why the panic, you ask? well, i got worried because i emailed dan and he hadn't emailed back. this was late morning, when i had my first "attack" or whatever you'd call it. so i'm sitting there getting sick to my stomach, the tension is building, balloons are popping and my nerves are shot. i think, wait, he's probably at lunch, he's probably very busy, why am i worrying? i know why i'm worrying: it's because that's what i do.

i worry about everything--things i don't need to worry about are usually at the top of my list, ie, other people, and a future that i cannot control.

so i micromanage the moment, and sometimes i let the moment micromanage me.

which sucks ass.

so i started to rationalize. perhaps that's not the healthy way to do things. but it's what i had to do. by lunch time around 130 i was doing just fine. i kept thinking, he'll email, he'll let me know that he's okay, etc. so naturally by the time it got to be later, i was in full panic mode. no emails, the phone's off at the moment so no phone calls...the list goes on. i left work and pretty much ran home, trying to shed this anxious skin--to no avail. my only salve for the panic that was racing through my veins was the fact that he was going to see thaddeus tonight.

and now i am trying to use up the adrenaline that's been spurred onward and upward by my spiralling brain by doing something to release it: writing about it.

is that healthy? who the hell knows. i think it feels good, because i'm letting it out. but at the same time, it prods me into worry over a whole nother set of items that i cannot control: how dan is doing now, while he's with thaddeus. what my parents are up to. why my sister hasn't emailed me back. what serena's up to.

i worry about teresa and jeff, and how they're holding together. i worry about the price of gas and how much it costs, i worry about why my stomach isn't feeling good.

mainly, i spend my day avoiding thinking about things so that i don't have to worry. and then sometimes you can't control it, it grows beyond your comprehension, and suddenly you've got godzilla coming out of the ocean and you're stumped.

who do you call? the ghostbusters?

it's always a surprise to me to see this happening. as if it didn't happen two days ago, or a week before that. i can be the most level headed person during large events. but the little things are the things that are my great wall of china between me and life.

thinking about this makes me try to understand it, because that is the best way to disarm an angry, hungry thought--learn about it, comprehend it. then it's not so scary.

so i break down why i'm panicking about not getting an email from dan, or from anyone else, for that matter:

1. it makes me feel forgotten.
2. it makes me feel left out.
3. it makes me feel that i am not worth enough to be remembered. which is the easiest part to rationalize, because i have a poor sense of self worth.
4. i'm concerned about the person in question. i want to know how they're doing.
5. i feel the need to keep tabs on things.

i think about things from the point of epictetus, who says that you have to realize what you can control and what you cannot.

1. i cannot control that i am not getting an email or a phone call, etc. i can control WHO i call and email, however.
2. i cannot control it if others forget me; i can only remember me, and know that i am not really forgotten.
3. i can be concerned about another person, but i cannot keep tabs on them. nor should i work myself into a fit of emotional knots over any of this, because the only person it's harming is me. and i'm no good to anyone else if i'm in panic mode.

so that brings me to now. i have to take stock of where i am at, what i need to do in order to live properly at the moment: let it all go. if i don't, i won't ever accomplish any of the items on my list.

1. probably eat something for dinner.
2. pay bills
3. watch last week's sg1 and battlestar galatica
4. drop a book off at the library
5. go and get tomatoes for the taco lunch tomorrow

so i'm going to TRY to move through the panic. i'm going to TRY to eat something, which might help my stomach out. i'm going to TRY to continue, and i'm going to TRY to avoid my own internal melodrama, because it's not helping me in the least.

so there you have it. acts one, two and three of kim's very own opera of anxiety.