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2005-01-29 // 2:13 p.m. Why must grief always come with questions? Answers always left behind. Just questions upon questions, building... building... until you can no longer see the surface. I am fighting this grief. I can feel it. The Buddhists would say that, if it is grief I am meant to be experiencing right now, then my task is to grieve. Oh but how tempting it is to thrash it to bits, this grief, and let anger seep into my flesh like blood-thirsty maggots. I can't stand feeling this way, but somehow simultaneously I know that I'm supposed to be leaning into it. I'm supposed to bask in it for Christ's sake. I'm supposed to become it. Become grief. sigh How to do that? Well, I suppose to a witness, I was grief itself just a few minutes ago, kneeling in the shower, snot and tears disappearing into the water spraying over me. I was fighting it, though. I was grief and I was fighting grief. Simple math equation - if I am grief and I am fighting grief then guess what? I am fighting myself. How fucking fascinating. I guess the prognosis for acceptance is pretty grim as long as I'm fighting my own existence. So let's shift gears. I'm breathing now, just breathing. "Don't forget to breathe. In the nose, out the mouth. Very important." Yes, thank you Mr. Miagi. In the shower, I was crying, asking the famous, "Why??" of God. A new wave of emotion hit and I viciously tore fresh tears out of my eyes. Suddenly, I looked down at the hand that had done it and realized that I was not only fighting this grief, but neglecting entirely to hold any compassion for myself. This is a big deal, to realize this in the moment. (For many, it is momentous to realize it at all.) My lack of compassion for myself and my emotions brought me to write this. It also called me to pick up a book I recently started. "The Places That Scare You" by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun. Advice at the very beginning of the book:
Confess your hidden faults. Okay so one at a time... 1) Confess your hidden faults. I am unable to hold true compassion for myself for an extended period of time, and my initial reaction to pain is rarely, if ever, self-compassion. 2) Approach what you find repulsive As with other friendships that have ended mysteriously in the past, despite the fact that this one is being handled by a much more enlightened and actively kind person, I do not consider myself worthy of keeping a long-term, spiritually full and healthy friendship. I mustn�t. Why else would I fear that these people will leave? And for that matter, why do, they leave? There must be something I believe about myself that allows negative energy to creep into my most meaningful friendships, ultimately destroying nearly all of them. 3) Help those you think you cannot help In this instance, this is I. There is no one else to help here. Well, I take that back. I could do some tonglen and send loving support to Gib, asking the universe to guide her in this process. And maybe I do feel that I can't help Gib do this because what if the place she's supposed to arrive at doesn't include me? It would be beyond difficult to assist someone in deciding that I am not good or healthy for them. But this does not feel like the correct perspective. It is me whom I feel unable to help. How do I find my own clarity? How do I mend this broken heart? How do I think of her without having tears well in my eyes? How do I accept? That is the most important question. How do I help myself accept this? Accept that she is questioning the health of our connection... Funny, when E spent that weekend here while he was visiting from L.A., I mentioned to him that it had actually occurred to me that my relationship with her might not be good for me. That her presence might actually be harmful because there was such codependency. I shared with him that, although this effect seemed to be weakening, whenever I felt unsure or unsteady in my relationship with Gib, I felt my own life slide out of control. If things weren't right with us, things weren't right with me. That is dangerous. I might have to return to this portion because it feels fuzzy. For now, though, I will say that it is me that I feel I cannot help. I don't know how to handle, or even look at the possibility that this kind, gentle, amazingly powerful and affecting soul could have actually revealed negative things to me, taught me important lessons with a negative focus. It's kind of like what she said to me, about me, on the phone today: "This is one of those cases where the package is so unlikely. I would have much preferred the package look something like Mary Pierce [a woman we worked with at Filenes whose presence literally felt dangerous, like a vortex] rather than you, but it may be that the package is someone you grow very close to and hold very dear to your heart." Gib is apparently coming to see the negative aspects of our connection. Interestingly enough, in the past month, I began to do the same. E immediately dismissed the possibility that she wasn't good for me when I brought it up, but I knew it was not the last time I would contemplate it. 4) Anything you are attached to, let it go. Well, clearly, this concerns my friendship with Gib. I have allowed myself to be more attached to this, I believe, than any other object, experience or condition in my life. That alone should tell me to step away. 5) Go to the places that scare you. Life without Gib. Definitely. Well, this is on the specific term. In more broad terms, life without connections similar to the one she and I shared. What would that look like? A vast plane, living alone in a shack on the desert sand, surrounded by villages full of nonspiritual idiots. Okay, this is what it would look like but must I actually experience it? Must I actually lose every spiritual connection I have (the few that remain) and experience life without shared meaning? I feel as though I've already done this in my childhood. Oh my. Oh, oh my. The reason (or one of them) that I fear losing close, spiritual friendships is because I never had this sort of connection growing up. Never. I felt exactly like I was living in that shack on the desert sand, surrounded by those villages full of nonspiritual idiots. I have already experienced "the place that scares me" and each connection that I lose makes me petrified that I'm making a pilgrimage back to that lonely, desolate place. Here is the compassion. How can I not hold compassion for the child in me who fears living alone with no one who will understand him? On the most fundamental level, I grew up misunderstood because everyone told me I was something that I wasn't. Everyone treated me as though I was something that I wasn't. Everyone saw me as something that I wasn't. I've spent my whole life figuring out who I am and doing my best to surround myself with people who would believe, support and encourage every aspect of me. Of course, when one of these people vanishes, I become paralyzed with the fear that this loss equates to one more step back toward the lonely place I came from. And of course these connections, these people, vanish because they sense my fear, my resistance. They probably feel it like it is something they can't break through. Jesus Christ. Could it be that the particular brand of wall that I hold up is one stacked with fear that I will end up spiritually and emotionally alone? The definition of psychotic behavior is acting in such a way that will prohibit the fruition of that which you most want or need. This, and not knowing that you're doing it. The definition of neurotic behavior is acting in this way while having consciousness of it. I've been psychotic all this time. Did I just turn a psychosis into a neurosis? Though neither is good, a neurosis can at least be worked on because its presence is known. That first step of transcending denial. This must mean that (drum roll) I don't let people in. Really in. Truly in. All the way in. How could I if, in the details of my connection with another human being, lies my fear that they're going to leave? Jesus, I was just saying to E, and Jen too, that Gib's emotions are calculated. That she never truly lets anyone in because she plans her emotions ahead of time. She decides how much she's going to let someone see. It made me so sad to realize this it about her. Lo and behold, I don't truly let people in for my own reason. Hers has to do with the fear she was taught at early childhood that the people she loves and trust will always hurt her. Mine has to do with the fear I was taught at early childhood that the people I love and trust will never understand me. This inability to understand me inhibits them from ever being able to respect or even believe me. Further, they will not have faith in me because of the simple fact that they do not comprehend my goals. Talk about feeling alone. And talk about the perfect set up for grabbing and holding on for dear life to every individual who comes my way who actually does understand me, or even comes close. My, have I given myself a lot to look at. And a lot to do. In the coming weeks, days and hours, I need to:
1) Begin learning self-compassion My own self-compassion does exist. It does. I'm just beginning to learn its hiding places. For one, it hides in others, the others I choose to hand it over to. "Here," I say, "have compassion for me, understand me, respect me, believe me, have faith in me because I feel unable to do these things for myself." I need to reclaim what I so freely give others control of. This is my life, for the time being anyway. I need to stop acting like the lost, forgotten child and start taking responsibility for the person I am and the person I wish to become.
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