emotions – thingspeoplelookup.com

Update: posting as pain relief

Until today, it was the most popular post in my (five-day) blogging career. “Posting as pain relief” resonated with a lot of you, and still grows in readership bit by bit. This was unexpected. It was truthful in a way that I can’t say to anyone live.

But I have some good news.

Yesterday afternoon found me on errands, including stops at shops where I could kit out my new workout space. The shop with the plush rug. The used sports equipment shop for 20-lb. dumbbells. The Salvation Army for some kind of slick plates that would make better gliders than the ones I’ve got.

While in the Salvation Army, I passed by the furniture, giving it a dreamy look. It was in good shape, all of it. Mine is…not so great. Cats with claws will do what they do and there’s not much you can do until they’re gone.

My mind went dark. Shouldn’t I, at an age I’m not telling you but which is old enough I should likely be looking elsewhere at furniture, not look longingly at used stuff?

I felt the familiar feelings of failure. Of pointlessness and worthlessness and the real question of whether my future was worth attempting. Instantly, from the brain stem or the amygdala or wherever that starts, my blood was pumped with it.

But a funny thing happened at Sam’s Club. Just down the road a piece from the Salvation Army, I found a fair parking spot on a busy Saturday. It was sunny and hot, at least for the upper Midwest. I didn’t move for a moment. Full of bad feeling, of sighs, a slow heartbeat, I simply told myself to stop.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that this would be the first time in my life that organically, truly out of the blue, I dismissed my failures – “failures” – and acknowledged instead my accomplishments, all of which came thanks to an early resilience and the distinct impression that six-year-old me could be Alexis Carrington one day.

joan-collins-alexis-carrington-Cd7cff848ad9f26ccde1cd0e3050f3148 — *Without a doubt.*

All of this, thanks to blogging. It’s a correlation, and maybe a weak one, I don’t know. But I’ve had a lot of therapy and I’ve never had revelations anywhere, but especially not at Sam’s Club before. And if this is happening at Sam’s Club, it’s probably best not to think too hard about correlation vs. causation.

Thank you, all

There’s a hole in the heart that’s truly hard to fill, if it ever does. I think writing is one way to start. Your feedback doesn’t hurt! I’ll take it anytime. And will keep you posted as my health changes with a regular writing practice. It’s an interesting experiment, this, and look forward to sharing it with you.

Weakness as strength. Strength as weakness.

Hilary Mantel is the fantastic author of Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies. If you’re into historical fiction and good writing, pick these up.

She’s also the author of a memoir I’ve not read, Giving Up the Ghost. It includes a quote called out by the Times, one that struck me and I’m not yet sure why:

“I used to think that autobiography was a form of weakness, and perhaps I still do. But I also think that, if you’re weak, it’s childish to pretend to be strong.”

If you’re weak, it’s childish to pretend to be strong.

The greatest power, is in not needing it. There’s a quite confidence one can effect when you’ve got nothing to prove.

But there’s a difference between believing unfailingly in one’s competencies, and using them as a cover for what is an existential weakness. Am I being childish by closing off my weakness to my local world?

I don’t mind telling you. Here’s my weakness: Part of me is eternally six. Easily hurt. Prideful. Resilient, never not sad, but could make people laugh even then. Here’s the key: little me is in control a lot and I feel like I can’t help it. It might be childish to pretend otherwise. But is this something you can say out loud in America?

Hours and hours

strong-little-girl I work out for hours at a time. It’s contemplative, meditative, painful. I can’t imagine working out for a normal amount of time; it wouldn’t seem enough. Today’s workout made me realize that this is another cover, and it’s not just for my vanity. The pain feels familiar. It feels like weakness. It is weakness. Nobody works out for hours if they don’t have to.

What am I covering for? Am I taking myself back to my young painful life? Am I desperately trying to give my six-year-old the muscle she needs? I don’t know. I’m open to your thoughts.

We’ll be back after these messages

There’s a lot in Mantel’s quote to unpack. It deserves more than one post; it deserves a conversation. Please leave your thoughts in the comments. We’ll talk again soon.

Missing

I subscribe to a website written by a couple of kids who call themselves soul-workers. There’s stuff about chakras and Solfeggio frequencies and twin flames. At first blush the grownup in you might think you’ve landed at the wrong place; you were looking up “how to stop crying all the time.” But the site has a great deal of good, practical advice and information, crystals notwithstanding.

This includes types of muscle tension, or which emotions get stuck in which parts of the body. I don’t know how true it is that guilt, shame and unworthiness congregate only in the lower back, but I’d believe it because my lower back hurts and I feel all those things.

And I have headaches. I get them all the time.

I wake up with them. If I don’t wake up with them I get them by the middle of the day, end of the day at the latest. I work with them, although I’m not as good at working with a headache as I used to be. I’ve been getting them for nearly 20 years. There’s not much choice in the matter. And it doesn’t matter what kind of headache it is. They all hurt.

I take a cocktail of anticonvulsants and muscle relaxants at night to control – or try to – one source of the daily trauma: TMJ. I have my ex-husband and a car accident to thank for the TMJ. (Thank you!) Some days I don’t know what’s worse: The fear of waking up, painfully, or the struggle to forgive the man and what was a true accident.

I work at mitigating the symptoms. Feverfew, heat, trigger-pointing knots across my back until I’m tearful, sweaty, and nauseous. I’m impatient. I meditate at night. It’s not helping yet. It’s supposed to but it’s not. Is five months enough?

I frequently swallow too many triptans, too many days in a row. These are migraine abortives, in case you didn’t know, and you’re only supposed to take them twice a week, tops. But you try having a migraine every day and see how long you last. They’re expensive and I’ll pay anything to have enough.

The worse part? It’s not the physical pain. It’s missing.

I miss work. Calling in yet again is heartbreaking in its normal abnormality. A frequently deformed workweek, the stress of failure. Talent wasted. No one is as sick as I am.

I miss people. There is an encompassing fear of making a friend then revealing that in fact, there’s something she should know so she can decide if she wants to be friends with someone who, when asked How are you? will probably lie. I’m OK.

I miss love. See above, making friends. Then multiply it times infinity: How could someone ever love a woman who can’t get her head on straight? Who takes a senior citizen-sized handful of pills each night? You can only hide that for so long.

I miss days. Sunshine hurts my eyes. Rain swells my sinuses. My shades are drawn and I wish the days to pass with a singular purpose, like a line of worker ants with their one job. Then like time they’re gone.

This website, with its talk of shamanism and spiritual teachers, would advise me to attack the root and symptoms by being kind to myself in practical ways. It’s in a book I bought from them: Do some yoga, wear bright colors, discuss every day with myself what is good about myself.

But I don’t know what that is anymore.

Many thanks to lonerwolf, a truly lovely site written and run by truly lovely people. It’s full of free and affordable advice anyone can use. Check them out if you’re stuck. Note: I have no affiliation with the site.