12 steps for non-drug addicts.

I've been reading a book. It's strange, because it's really connected to my life... and my future. In a lot of ways.

The most profoud thing to which I've been connecting, is the detailed accounts of the subject's journey through addiction. It's been hitting me very personally. I stopped when I realized this, and asked myself, "why?" The question really is, "am I an addict?" With what did I connect?

I have a reactional habit that's borne out of strongly uncomfortable feelings. It's complex. Actually, I have a lot of them. And they're destructive. To me, and to my family. AND my business relationships. I also have an unhealthy amount of guilt surfacing from years of the damage caused by my habit that makes the whole cycle repeat itself. The difference between me and a drug addict right now is that I appear healthy. My body is strong. I can hold intelligent conversations.

What are my uncomfortable feelings? I told myself, in my head today, while I was at the gym, "I'm worthless." It came to me out of the blue while I watched a man curl 27.5 lbs on each arm. It's not an absurd amount, and I thought, at first, that eventually I could do that. I'm already curling 20 on each arm. Then like a sudden sucker punch out of pitch blackness, I had a knee-jerk insult whallop me in the face. I'm worthless. I'm not enough yet. I'm not there. I have no value.

It's ABSURD. In the next moment I thought of a hundred different arguments to the contrary, not to mention a flurry of memories of people who love me, and whom I love deeply. But the inital, deep, organic thought still burned under there. I could probably write encyclopaedic-length volumes on where that feeling comes from and where it's going. But to be more relevant I needed to ask myself next, "so what am I doing about this?"

This is where my habit kicks in. I feel like it's uglier than anything I've felt guilty about before, including sexuality. Although sexuality likely ties into this, somehow. In fact, I know it does, but that's another entry altogether. So, simply, my habit is that I overbook myself. I've been getting told this with increasing regularity, and now it's starting to haunt me. I want to be so much to people that I promise the moon. And I'll drive there and back to get it. The more money, ablity and access I'm given (because I talk a good game), the more I take. But not for myself... it's given directly to everyone else, in time and gas and headaches and manhours and coffees and dinner and whatever else. I thought it was bad scheduling, but it's something so much deeper.

I have these terrible feelings of not being held in high esteem. I also personally invest myself in others' problems, their personal lives. I want to re-create them, heal them, fix them, see their eyes light up and their world become comfortable and rich. I feel full when I see other people eat. I feel guilty for so many unfinished assignments, bad marks, betrayed people, disappointed people, for... lying. For such a long time, now. I've lied about so much. I've made it a habit. An art. I want to erase what I've writen because now it's getting painful. I feel like crying because I feel like I can never be consistent. I over book myself because I lie about what I can handle, about what I've already got on my plate, about what I've already accomplished (or not). I lie because I'm ignorant of my own limits. Ilie because I want to please, and I'm terrified of being honest and killing someone's perception of me.

I've met someone who makes this all so wrong. I have to stop. I can't fuck around. I've been more honest with myself in the last month than I ever have in my life. I have real gravity now. I feel like I need to make amends with so many people. I feel like i have to change right NOW. I feel like I lack the courage and strength to stay away from things that will damage me. I feel like pleasure is too strong a pull to resist. I want to keep living the way I'm living, but I know it'l only deepen the schism inside me, the separation from what's real and what's a pretty, gorgeous sham.

I also need to understand what's mine. I realized lately that I get turned on when I rebel and do things that are secret, restrained, covered, hidden... I get turned on by a hand down my pants, but when the pants come off, sometimes so does the arousal. I love it when there's movement under the blankets, but when the fresh air hits me, I dry up. I seem to need to carve out space for myself and not be accountable. I feel a huge, pressing weight on me most days, it's followed me around forever. I used to cry because I'd never keep my grandmother alive. I didn't know enough about her ways and her talents to mimic them exactly and keep her alive. I cried about this when I was 8. Stayed up late, weeping and panicking in bed. Now, I feel totally, utterly inadequate. I slouch. I don't do the dishes. I let the laundry fall behind. I wear shockingly inappropirate clothing. I'm sexually liberal. I still don't get assignments done. I hide. I want to run. I lose track of time. I forget to take out the garbage. I don't do my taxes on time. My bills are poorly tended to because I'm not consistent with saving OR with collecting money for my efforts. I want to have a career, but I don't think I can handle it. I've broken prmises, I've lied because I was scared, I've lied because I've indulged, because I've been weak, because I've rebelled.

All this sounds so human and forgiveable. Why do I feel so burdened by it? Why do I feel like i'm an addict? Because I keep doing it. Because it feels as though this controls me, and even though I WANT to be better, I want to be mor ein control, I want to be something else, I have this habit that keeps fucking me over. And I'm done with it.

I need to change. It's so hard. I have so much shame. Shame. It's all about shame. I blossom under approval because it's the lack, th eopposite, of shame. That's the magic word I've been trying to uncover, folks. Shame. Embarrassment. Lots and lots of shame. There are plenty of times I feel fearless and free, but when the tired, vulnerable stuff comes up, it's got to do with loads of shame. He's got big muscles? I'm fat. Shame. You want me to be loyal? I'm not. Shame. They call me honest. I've got secrets. Shame. I procrastinate. Shame. I can't cook like yia yia. Shame. About COOKING! The house isn't clean. Shame. I haven't been forthcoming about my lack of interest. IN you, in it, in him, in her, in whatever. So I've let it go too far, too long. Shame. I can't make you any money. I can't help you. I can barely straighten myself out. Thanks for having patience with me. Thanks for believing in me. It helps lift some of this shame. This timidness, this fear, this self consciousness.

I need to face all these people I've disappointed, after I've forgiven myself, and ask for theirs. I need a plan. I need a partner. I need someone to stick by me even if it hurts, and I know I have that. I guess I need the reassurance. I have more than one partner in this life. Why do I say I need one? Perhaps because I'm afraid they'll give up in their hurt, and leave me. Fear of abandonment. Haha. Actually, it's closer to fear of hurting them. Because then I feel that crushing shame again.

I'm starting to heal. But I have to keep going with it. I tend to like to tie things up in pretty bown and call it a done deal. Happy ending. Ta da! I've ended with a prayer and the future looks sunny. Not going to do that this time. The ball needs to keep rolling.

Blind

Usually, when I think about my future month or year or life in general, I get a feeling. It's a general feeling. Sometimes it's stress, sometimes dread, sometimes it's a casual, carefree hope, sometims there's an element of excitement or wonder. Lately, however, I feel nothing. I feel blindness or numbness or a lack of perception of what I can expect, even a day or two down the road. Maybe it's a numbness in response to fear or guilt. Maybe it's a refusal to push through and own up to the consequences of my actions. I don't know. Yes, I do. Until I get my period, and the next two weeks have passed uneventfully, I can't be certain that my future is secure.

I can't believe how I refuse to learn. I have such a lack of will, or personal integrity. I'm a jellyfish in the face of pleasure. When did I become so weak? I was a very principaled little girl. And something changed along the way. When I started to grow into a stinky, oily, awkward teeneger, I experienced an astonishing lack of aceptance and love. And it seems as though the enjoyment that people get out of me now is so intoxicating that I completely lose my nerve, and put my better judgement to sleep. It's like I have to be in trauma in order to remember any lessons I've learned. Of course, that can't be sustained... I always "heal", and so I think I tend to re-traumatize myself so I can keep my"lessons" in mind.

Why do I have to keep hurting myself, or puttin gmyself in risky situations in order to do something that SHOULD, by all accounts, be natural? It must mean there's something unnatural about what I'm trying to adhere to. Either that, or the natural and good is more difficult than the supernatually wrong. Something to do with entropy. Tension within order. Relaxation in chaos. There's a problem with minimum energy in chaos, however. It's almost as if order has a life of its own, and presses itself on chaos, forcing it into line, into cause and effect... into consequence. INto a plan for the future. And so when I delve into a certain chaos, it offers me temporary relaxation, until the narrow path, the rocky truth, the real life moves in, and forces me to come out of chaos. BUt the reality I enter into is changed in my absence. I've damaged it, at least that's what I fear. I guess I fear that I've ruined my chance and coming back home. Perhaps I feel like I do't deserve it. In fact, I DO feel like I don't deserve it. And I feel like when I AM there, I won't be hapy in it. I guess this is how hell feels. God's love is there, but your soul hasn't learned to delight in it, coupled with a deep feeling of unresolved and unlifted guilt.

This is the biggest sin. Not trusting that I'll live through this. Not loving God's love enough to submit to my path. I need to love God's ways, and all will be well.

What is God's way? Why can't I totally physically love my husband? Is there a different reality I'm meant to experience? No. There's very real danger associated with tht risky "Other"... dangers that would really tear at the family.

So. My future holds tenacity. It holds the promise of me living through "It"... living through my choices, and thriving. Lord, have mercy on me and have mercy on Ben. Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, this married couple, preserve us and keep us protected and strong together. Overcome all evil forces pushing in on us, subtly and strongly. Keep me strong, willfull and brave in Your Word and on Your path. Have mercy on me. Keep me. Keep me together and healthy. Banish illness from my body, and keep me pure and strong. Have mercy on my womb and keep all wrong things from it. Take away things that don't belong there. Keep my eyes open. Relieve my blindness. Help me see. Give me hope. I'm a chronic sinner... I can't stay out of the mud. Help me wash it away and get through to dry land. I have courage and hope in You.

I Am My Own Best Lover.

Came from a night of dancing. A short one. I got to sweat a little bit, got to feel that music and those bodies a little bit. Had to come home early. Parents. I live with my parents, and they have an opinion about when I should be home.

I'm 30.

With kids.

I can never escape those things, those wretched qualifiers. I don't really want them to be stricken from the record, but I wish they didn't carry the weight that they do when it's midnight and I'm listening to really good music. Alone.

Tonight, I could have been drinking a lot of wine with two very lovely people who would have locked me up and exquisitely whipped me. Tonight, I could have met them at their home while we talked and drank and coaxed pleasure out of the night. But I had to run. I felt wild. I felt smooth. I felt happy and beautiful, and the music I was listening to was rocking my ribcage, my shoulders. The strap from my pink satin camisole slid down off my shoulder, then my brastrap did. My hair was wild and puffy and my eyes looked dark and sparkling. The window was open and the almost-warm-enough air gave my body the idea that it wanted company. I wanted a car to slide up next to mine, window open. I wanted a soul inside that car to hear my music and see my smile and nod at me. I wanted someone to follow me to a dark spot somewhere, get in the van, lay down the seat wordlessly and listen with me to the passion pouring out of the speakers. I wanted to touch skin without sound, I wanted someone to taste my sweat and pull my hair, making my head snap sharply to one side, chin to shoulder, eyes cast down. Then the hand would release my hair and rake paths over my white shoulders, down my back, over my ribs. A hand would lift my chin and lips and tongue would devour mine.

All this... all this, alone, when i could have been in a bed with two lovely people with whips and wine. Or on the dance floor with sweat and pulse. And I'm here. 30, alone, with kids. Even if my husband were here, I would be alone.

I want a lover who understands this. I want a lover who loves the drama of lovemaking. I want to be touched the way I touch myself, and I want words to burn a path into my body. I want motion, tightness, firmness, locked bodies, smooth bodies, undulation and celebration. Desperation. Honest passion. Delicious skin.

So I will touch myself in the way I know how, and imagine there's someone there who knows this, who feels it, who can surround me with themselves. I want to walk right up to you, sink myself onto you, dance on top of you, feel the art and the music of my sex filling up the room and taking us both away.

My new motto.

Lebenskünstler = master of the art of living (Sourced from http://leisurearts.blogspot.com/2006/08/lebensknstler-leisurearts-notes.html )


I received a God-given phone call today from my grandmother. I've been feeling very VERY down after being cut from a dance team I shoudn't have been on, anyhow. I've been trying to deal with increased work and a feeling of needing to nurture my professional life, while feeling quite guilty about the time spent away from the family. My grandmother called just now, and told me to pass a message onto my mom, that she had foudn the bridge for her cello that would replace the broken bridge. She was fearing she'd lost it. My mom is napping, however, and I got to chit chat with her for a little while. I was explaining my life a little, and trying to describe that staying home with the blinders on was stifling and miserable, but being out and about too much was too manic and caused a different kind of imbalance. Omi said "there's a word for this in German, 'lebenskünstler', and it means, 'artist of life'. You need to find the happy medium and live well." there you have it. It made me cry. It's something I've heard like every day my entire life, but it was exactly what i needed to hear right now.

Those Germans have a word for everything.

I want to be a lebenskünstler, and I will be. If I feel the yearning to master something, it will be this. Not an aspect of of what I must balance, but balance itself. I will be my zodiac in perfect symmetry. If I feel the need to shine and perform with astonishing mastery, I'll dedicate myself to health, to the perfection of the art of living. Everything else is not only soul-killing, but murder on the peace of those who need and love me.

Oscar Wilde once purportedly said "I put my talent into my work, but my genius into my life." A suitable introduction to this week's entry, Lebenskünstler. Literally translated, it means "life-artist." ... He is a Lebenskünstler. Someone who pieces together his living from various activities that, collectively, bring in just enough money to live. No office, no suit, no boss, no rules. German has a word for such people, and English doesn't. There's even a higher form of Lebenskünstler, and that is the Überlebenskünstler, or "survival artist." -- from the blog "LeisureArts"

I'm going to find out more about Oscar Wilde. He's been placed in front of me for a very strong reason. I will follow through.

Question for the Clerics.

I understand that heaven is more a state of existence than a place. In my Orthodox upbringing, we're taught that heaven is how, after death, a soul that loves God and His ways is in union with God, and in ecstatic joy, wrapped in the fullness of God's intimate love. Embraced by His love, the soul is now home and one with its creator. Hell, on the other hand, happens to a soul that has not grown to love God's ways or God's love, and now that it has passed over to the other side, lives in the eternal torment of not being able to accept, perceive, or take joy in the boundless love all around it. I would also add that it lives in contact, eternal yearning for a love and peace that it can never have, even though it exists more closely than ever.

So then, the idea is that our time on earth is time for us to condition ourselves to be open to God, to allow Him in to shape our souls, in preparation for living with him after the end, so that we become something that can receive his love, totally. In this way we will be enraptured by Him, and not alien and unfit for the love He has for us.

Question is, is it enough to WANT to love God, to yearn to be with him, to know the relief his love spells, even though you cannot stop sinning, even if you try? Is repentance enough? What if I can never truly repent? If I confess and weep and long for change, and I go and do the same thing again, have I really repented? I know this is the exact issue Christians lament and rejoice in at the very same time. It's this state of totally predictable and inescapable sin from which we are delivered. It's very, very hard to accept, sometimes, that we live in a redeemed state, no matter what we do. While the joy of Christianity lies in the idea that if we repent, believe that we are saved and forgiven, and are loved in God's eyes, it's so hard to let go of self-loathing when you steer yourself wrong. I guess, ultimately, it's more humbling to accept that you're loved despite your mistakes and your hurtful crimes, that you've marred a beloved soul, that all you have to do is keep loving yourself the way God loves you, that you have to continue to love in order to grow love. I can't explain it well enough, but it's almost humiliating to be shown love after you've messed up, royally. You wind up feeling like a dirty-faced, crying child.

Is it enough to want God? Or do you have to be living some kind of better life than what I keep getting seduced by? Or is everything I'm experiencing and choosing part of the plan to break me down, so I will finally allow His light to shine in? I've seen it before, I've been filled and warmed by it, I've been saved by it. I yearn for it now, and desperately hope I'm not unreachably far from it.

Catch and Release.

One thing I've discovered in writing this blog is that it seems to permanently release whatever it is I'm obssessing about... the things I write here, when captured in words, get released into the universe and don't come back. I don't want them back. I give them up as if I were igniting them and allowing them to become ash. The universe can have it.

In the few private moments I have right now, I wish to release my hate. All day long I've been saying, in my head, like a broken record (or scratched CD?), "I hate my life. I hate this. I hate living here. I hate him." It just keeps burning a track in my brain, and I'm afraid it'll burn so deeply I won't be able to emerge. Right now I feel like I love this track. I want to sink into it and destroy everything I hate, or run away from it, at least. I want to indulge it, and with a great amount of self-discipline, and maybe a smear of hope, I write it here. I want, more that I desire the indulgence of these passions, to be free. I read a post on a forum I visit that quotes Dostoyevsky; a quote about divine and universal love, despite all things. Right at this moment, when I feel like I'd love to crawl into bed and simply cement my feelings of hate with the seal of sleep, I read the thing I need to hear to free myself. Love is a choice. The quote is imperative.

COMPASSION MANDALA...from The Brother's Karamozov, by Dostoyevsky


...have no fear of human sin. Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of divine love and the highest love on earth...Love all of creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. love every leaf, every ray of light. love the animals, the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will percieve the divine mystery in things. Once you percieve it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

I can live freely and openly and deeply in love, or I can indulge this hate some more. Is this hate serving a purpose? It's making me mope around like a teenager. It's also making me want change, which we need. What do I see that needs changing?

I see our children really being ignored. We use the TV so much. We choose to play on the computer rather than engage with them. This is so far from the lifestyle I encouraged at our former home. Why has it become the status quo here, so easily?

Speaking of computers, we use it for our pleasure and release. I use it for communication. To say what I really feel. He uses it for his entertainment, to feel connected, while he was NO CONNECTION to friends in the real world. He also uses it to look at naked ladies doing what he wishes I were doing, but can't, because he'd rather be entertaining himself at the computer. I hate this. I always have. And it never seems to change. I'd like it to change. I'd like him to come to me and start a conversation. I'd like him to ask me to go for coffee with him. I'd like him to offer me a massage, impromptu. I'd like him to talk to me. Have fun with me. Want me exclusively, find ways to entertain me, find ways around our situation to sneak in some love. He doesn't work at it. We're never a we. I've talked about this before. Do I need to talk about it again?

We're in my parents' house. I want that to change, too. I feel like getting a house is an inordinately heavy task for me to strive for on my own, and he seems content to wait here. I am not. I need out. I can wait a couple of months, and then I need my own space again. Money. It's pressing its ugly foot against my neck. I vowed to never become enslaved by thoughts of getting a house, getting more money... because it's soul-killing. I've done it once before, and I'm not interested in feeling that way again. Can I be like a patient Jedi and just sit and breathe and wait for the proper time? Why am I so impatient?

Because I'm filled with loathing, boredom, disapproval, restlessness and hate here. I don't want to deal with the things I see, the piles of work that never seem to get done, the effort it takes to get anywhere. I'm tired of the floors that need work, the walls that have been done poorly, the paint job that needs to get FINISHED after six bloody years. I'm too close to everyone, and have no space in which to be creative. Or alone. Or sexual. Or relaxed. This is why I want to leave.

I need release from all of this. If my mind could open up and find the space it needs just inside my head, if I could just feel love and enjoy the closeness, if I could just embrace the faults and have patience and talk and change the things that can be changed, I think I would feel that freedom I desire so greatly.

And even as I write that, there is a hard little seed in me that hopes somehow, my wish won't be granted. I have a miserable little grouch inside that's sabotaging these desires and tells me I'm not speaking the truth. All I want, it says, is true freedom, and to abandon everything for the sake of me. Truth is, just me is boring, useless, disloyal and misanthropic. Too quiet. Rash. Impulsive. Lonely. Desperately, coldly lonely... a loneliness that seems to echo and clang in its harshness. I don't even find very many people pretty anymore. It's as if the loneliness is taking from me the ability to be intrigued by anyone, thus stabilizing itself. It likes living in me. It seeks company, but hates it at the same time. Because weirdly, it feels good feeling so shitty. You can say so many awful things when you're stuck inside your head. You can utter things that feel like truth, that may actually be truth... but I suspect are not the bigger truth. The Truth with a capital "T". Loneliness and despair is like some kind of miserable masturbation. I hate it. I've fought it for a long time, and I'm standing on the verge.

The true me is asking the universe to take this from me, along with all the other junk, and hear the feeble voice that wants to be full of light, forgiven, pure, loved and loving again. Please help me forget this misery. Make me ready to release it.

Dreams: Your All-Access Portal to the Other Side

There has been a lot of intensity in the last few weeks. 2007 has begn a year of earnest change and revelation, and also a year that focuses on forgiveness, truth, courage and change. I've met nearly uncomfortably strong or intense people that have affected me deeply, and I've also felt danger more acutely. I'm standing on a knife's edge.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with my mentor, and asked her a question to which I already knew the answer. I asked her if my grandmother was with me, intimately. My mystical mentor confirmed that she was, and that she said "hi". I couldn't stop smiling. I asked my grandmother to talk to me, or show herself to me. The last two nights, she's come to me in dreams, in a very intense way. She's different... she's part of me, more. Her body has changed. She looks younger and she's more vigourous, but in the dreams, she's been preparing for death again. She and I both know it's coming, and the dreams have revolved around the emotions that exist surrounding the idea of anticipation of the end. In the first dream, she was getting ready, walking around my maternal grandmother's house, and every chance I got, I was hugging her and begging her not to go. She was preparing the stuff that she wanted me to have. In the second dream, which was just a few hours ago, she was in our kitchen, and we were making food. Her eyes were round and wide and reminded me of my childrens'. She was putting ingredients into my bowl so I could use some crazy noodle-making instrument. I remember that it was her hands. When I saw her preparing the food, I instantly got a rush of emotion and held her in an almost childlike embrace, and kissed her the way I kiss my youngest son. I asked her why she was here, and shouldn't she be somewhere else? To which she responded, "it's going to be so much better when we go to meet Him together, don't you think?"

My dad told me that dreams in which the dead speak, are simply reflections of our own emotions, and that the departed one is a construct of your own making. Or, on the other hand, that God is telling you that it's alright. When the dead do not speak and answer questions, that's when they're really there. I don't know. Why did he say that? Daddy knows some things. But does he know about this? Greeks know a lot about dreams and have a very rich superstitious/occult kind of cultural life, that's oddly braided together with very conservative and rich Christianity. I tend to believe all of it. The issue is, of course, spiritual safety, and what to acknowledge as helpful and truthful. Are these dreams me, working through my terrifying, panic-like response to my grandmother's death? Or are they her, because I asked her to be with me? We have the same name, I was her first girl (my first cousin never bonded with her like I did), and she always walked past me, when I was around her, and told me that there was "something about you that makes you different, special, important." Then she would tell me she loved me and kiss my eyes.

I'm living a life, now, in which I'm permitting behaviour she never would have considered. I don't know at all whether or not she'd be shocked. I get the strong, odd feeling that she wouldn't be shocked at all. I think she's concerned, but she's showing a profound amount of wisdom and love.

Am I going to die soon? I have to start preparing for the end, because I very well could. I'm not off my rocker. I have to come to peace with my life and my choices. I have to be forgiven for a lot, and I have to admit to God my wrongness. I don't, for one second, think I could have avoided the various things I've done. We are imperfect creatures, and we're ruled by our passions (in the classic sense of the word). This is not a romantic notion, and it's not a write-off. We are simultaneously fallen and redeemed. I have to place myself squarely in the nexxus of truth and forgiveness, and the only way to do that is to prepare for death, and wash myself, and dress myself, so that I can be presentable when I meet Him. Even if it's not coming tomorrow, my grandmother is reminding me that it is coming, regardless. Wisdom! Let us be attentive.