One Thought at a Time (how I lost my monkey brain)

Aleathia says:

This week I treated myself to acupuncture for the first time in 20+ years. It isn't because I had fallen out of faith in this practice, but living in a small town it is much more expensive than when living in a city. There were colleges close by and graduating students would be able to practice acupuncture on live people and it would cost the people only 10 bucks. That was an immense deal for someone who was living check to check and had no insurance. It was point of care health on a tight budget.

I decided to start going again because my Seasonal Affective Disorder has been getting worse and worse after age 40. I expected this year to be the worst with there being so much transition in my life. Change happens. I get that, but it doesn't mean that I can fully grasp it. The comfort in my life had come from the predictable nature of it even if it was adversity, it was consistently crazy and I could count on that. I went in to address the Seasonal Affective Disorder as well as my chronic back pain and fatigue/anxiety/depression. Because I was very willing, my acupuncturist decided to "reset" my whole system and work on the back pain. When it was done colors were brighter, I felt light as a feather, and strangely.....depressed.

It seems as if the session might be counterproductive, but it wasn't. I did feel very tired and out of sorts for the last few days. I questioned if I made the right decision to have this work done; I questioned who I was without the rapid fire mind I walked in with. I spent the last few days going against the grain of this supreme calm state my mind and body was in. I literally was a salmon swimming upstream...kicking and fighting this peaceful feeling. It took everything I had this morning, but I went for a walk. On this walk, to still feel productive, I brought one of the 9 books I am reading. Do you see where my life is right now?

I have been reading "The Sanity We Are Born With" by Chogyam Trungpa which takes a Buddhist approach to looking at psychology. I have tried reading Chogyam Trungpa in the past with little result because the information is quite dense though not hard to understand. Mostly, it is mind blowing and a girl can only handle so much of that at once. But over the years I have read many Pema Chodron books who was a student of Chogyam Trungpa. I decided I was ready to pick up with the lama was putting down.

While walking I read this passage:

"The ideal state of tranquility comes from experiencing body and mind being synchronized. If body and mind are unsynchronized, then your body will slump--your mind will be somewhere else. It is like a badly made drum: The skin doesn't fit the frame of the drum; so either the frame breaks or the skin breaks, and there is no constant tautness."

Sometimes a very simple paragraph will set you on a journey. This is common sense information, right? Body and mind on the same page = good times. What I realized this morning was that I have spent so much time in mental chaos and my body has been in a separate chaos. Two things cased in the same skin doing completely different things and I wonder why I'm tire all the time. Acupuncture cleared my mind. I have had a feather lightness to my body and a sense of emptiness in my mind that is foreign and has caused me to feel like I needed to create as much physical noise as I could muster to combat the silence in my mind.

This need to fill every moment of my day possibly comes from the last year of being single. I have always struggled with what people think of me or how they might judge me. I felt as if being single at this age meant I was used up with nothing left to offer. This is a hard pill to swallow when you know you are full of life and adventure and new beginnings. I was afraid to appear lonely even though I am rarely lonely. I imagined that I should feel lonely having spent a life in the company of others but I feel more full of life than I ever have before.

The mind thinks one thing at a time even if we think we are doing "two things at once" they are just single thoughts very close together. I need to remember this. I need to not fill my day so full that I don't enjoy all the things I'm putting into it.

Thanks for reading.

Aleathia

Balance: An Obsessive's Unicorn

Aleathia says:

So my friend said to me the other day..."you haven't written in awhile". Yes, I know. "It's brewing," I told him. It wasn't all together untrue, but I wasn't sure what I was brewing. I'm always brewing 12 things at once. Choosing is hard. Finishing is hard. Focusing often challenging.

Days before I started thinking about balance. As a Buddhist, balance is often on my mind. Finding the middle way the goal in all things. Just being can be more difficult than it sounds. One of the scariest things in Buddhism to me is "form is emptiness and emptiness is form". I am one of those people who loves things in little boxes or on lists or categories. It gives me a sense of purpose. It makes me feel safe. It is my woobie. But consumed by boxes, lists and categories one misses out on life and opportunity. I think this is in part why I chose Buddhism all those years ago. I recognized the lack of freedom in my life and the stand up nature to be brave enough to look at my own shortcomings and still maintain some loving kindness towards myself. This talk isn't about Buddhism, but about balance and discovery, though Buddhism is always present when these two things happen.

Anyway, I have been struggling through winter in Upstate NY. Grey, dark, cold, blah and repeat. February is a millstone and often my most isolated and the time when obsessive behaviors are their worst. To battle these issues, I have been listening to 2 Dope Queens comedy. They make me laugh and I can always use more of that. On one of their episodes they were bantering back and forth talking about exercise and noted that people who just talk about their workouts and exercising are so boring.

I stopped smiling immediately. Panic. Looking around in isolation. More panic. They were talking to me.

January was the start of my training for a section hike of the Appalachian Trail and it has been my obsession. I have tracked every work out. I talked about all my workouts so much so my kid retreats to her room every night instead of hanging out with me. I talked about it at work. When I was alone, I talked to my self about it and have spent much of my free time doing research. I make personalized oatmeals. In effect, I am going bat shit crazy in my house.

Having goals are so wonderful. It inspires ambition and gives direction, but when you have an obsessive personality things can derail very quickly.  I would not say I am OCD as it would be unfair to take such a label from those that are truly diagnosed. My house is a damn mess....an organized chaotic mess. I'm not overly concerned with germs. Everything does not have its own place. But I do have obsessive tendencies that can make me short sighted. I believe this comes from an early childhood of being hyper-vigilant and scared and having to grow up too fast. How many of your friends can say they were left in charge of a newborn baby with no parents in the house at 8 years old? I grew up real quick. I needed certain things to be in certain places for life to make sense. So at age 44 it is hard to begin to untangle the wiring.

So here I am having some balance and trying to not feel guilty about it. I skipped my evening workout tonight to take my kid to dinner and say goodbye to my future hiking partner and go to the bookstore. The two hours I would have spent at the gym were replaced with good food and laughter, hugs and smiles, and more fucking laughter. It was followed up with the nerd fest of non-fiction book reading with my 16 year old and exchanging information on the relationship of trees and the history of colors. That is a memory I get to keep. I wouldn't have remembered the workout past its notation in my training journal. I guess what I am saying is that balance is a struggle for me and always has been. But it's never too late.

Try something new. Give yourself a break from routine. Be nice to yourself when you don't reach goals when you planned to. Enjoy life. It sounds corny.  It is corny, but true. Oprah says "The most valuable thing you can give yourself is time." That's some gospel right there. Spring is almost here friends. We can make it....one obsessive day at a time.

Thanks for reading.
Aleathia

Painted Glass and the Meaning of Life, a poem

Aleathia says:

We walked to the museum in perfect weather.
It felt like an eternity since we had shared
something simple but important.

5 years looming on the horizon
and I’ve forgotten who I was before you arrived.

I contemplate the significance of this
in the grand scheme of life.

Have I lost myself?
Have we grown too comfortable?
What does that even mean?
But I say nothing.
Live in this moment, I tell myself.

We look at sculptures in the white, stark wing
and comment on pieces we love revisiting,
take note of new specimens.

The painted, hazy glass catches my attention.

I am alone in front of it, my body a blur in the center.
I feel lost in the world. You come and stand beside me,
the blur gets larger and changes shape.

It is something new. The piece is new, we are new.
I take our picture, a portrait, I say. You half smile
and say nothing.

I am home.
I am where I am supposed to be.

Aleathia Drehmer 2016

3/10/2015 You Are NOT Special

Aleathia says:

I am sheer pages from finishing "Curious" so in honor of that I have picked up another non-fiction book to go in its place.  As it seems, these books are picking me by title alone.  There is something adventurous about choosing a book in which you have no preconcieved idea of what the contents are about.  Life is full of small mysteries.  You should exploit them when you can.

The book "You are NOT Special" by David McCullough, Jr. jumped out at me.  The size of the book is smaller than average and who is not intrigued by that title?  Who dare say that we are not special?!!

I have read the foreword and this book stemmed from a graduation speech given to his students in 2012.  He meant it as a farewell and good luck....as something the students could use as they were moving out on their own into this great big world.  It was 12 minutes long.  Someone posted it to the internet and McCullough was inundated with responses from all over the world, across all cultures.

We are living in a world where we micromanage our children.  I know this to be true of myself in some cases and in the last year since my mother died I have been trying to whoa it back some.  If I plan out my child's every move, every day...when does she get to figure out who she is?  When does she get to fail and pull herself up from that?  Experience, both good and bad, are a part of life and it is the hard points in our life that really do build our character.  Those times teach us to rely on ourselves and to persevere.  If we bubble wrap our kids then we set them up for failure no matter how good our intentions are to give them a "good life".

Here is a passage from the foreword:

"Today's teenagers are, too many of them, unwitting victims of their parents' good intentions--or passive agents of their parents' vanity, or pawns to their parents' insecurities, or anxieties, or limited imaginations.  They've become showpieces in an arms race to impress admissions officers, and thereby the Joneses, and perpetuate the legacy of privilege.  The competition is, after all, stiff out there.  And from atop the stepladder of often considerable resources, kids can look pretty tall, and absolutely the view from up there can be wonderfully enriching.  Too often, though, their privileges are unwisely expended, in my view, and serve to promote, however inadvertently, swelling narcissism, assumptions of entitlement, superficial and/or robotic thinking.  Empathy withers. Maturation is slowed or halted altogether.  Self reliance dies in the bud.  And the anxious parent feels compelled to intercede once again."--David McCullough Jr


It is hard to look yourself in the mirror and know that on some level you do this to your children, that I do this to my child.  I grew up in a somewhat hostile environment with little supervision.  I am a survivor and one that can pull myself up, but I was also very scared and lonely all the time.  It was hard to make decisions because I was never sure what sort of punishment would be at the end of them.  My mother held high potential in me despite her never having graduated high school and this created a severe anxiety in me about always coming out on top.  I needed to be perfect in everything I did or I wasn't living up to my potential, or I wasn't worth loving.  This was how I felt in high school. This notion followed me around in my adult life until about 4 years ago when Michael changed my personal perspective and my boss Andrea changed my professional perspective.  They believed in me.  They loved me for who I am and for my natural abilities that I was afraid to showcase for fear of being judged too harshly and for fear of failing and being a disappointment.

This is the last thing I would ever want for my kid, but in some strange undercurrent it is something that we have done.  I have been backing off but her father is so hard on her.  She talks about fear and anxiety every time she gets a grade less than 84 because he shames her and takes away the things that make her happy.  What?  She doesn't want me to say anything because she believes it will make things worse.  She was in tears the other day.  I feel bad for her, but I told her that she will have to beat him at his own game.  We discussed reverse psychology and other defense mechanisms that might be going on.  Her father wasted his chance to go to college and have a career, twice, and I believe that he is so afraid she will do the same that he doesn't give her a chance to be her own person.  All I can do is support her at home.  I tried for 16 years to win that battle with her father before giving up. Sometimes you have to make your own way and have a leap of faith.

I can't wait to dig in to this new book.  Reading is fundamental!