Sensitive Superwoman

My boyfriend finds me sobbing on the couch a lot these days. I need to make a sign that says “MAGIC IN PROGRESS” to put over my face when that happens so he can stop worrying.

Sometimes you have to go deep into the breakdown to get to the magic on the other side.

Because I forget this always, here’s how a lot of my life has gone lately:

I’ll need to cry, I’ll avoid crying. I’ll get all locked up and frustrated and everything in life will slam to a halt and I won’t know why so I’ll get more frustrated and the locks will turn to cement. I’ll finally break down into the serious ugly cry - and a few hours later get a fresh influx of energy, inspiration, and joy.

No matter how many times this happens to me, I’ll insist on forgetting, insist on Not Needing To Feel Things, insist that my sensitivity has gotten better, and then my whole life will turn into an escalator that’s just stairs because the electricity is out. As we all know, that’s super annoying. Who wants to climb stairs when you’re supposed to get a sweet ride to the top?

My sensitivity is my super power. When I let the feels out, the electricity turns back on and everything starts working again. When I insist on ignoring it, life gets real aggravating.

Moral of the story: When life stops and looks at you with exasperation, feel whatever’s clawing at your chest and trying to get out. It helps.

On Waking Up at 4 in the Morning

Every morning I wake up at 4 a.m., which is terrible and has to stop.

Because I’m me, I googled what Chinese medicine had to say about waking up at such an aggravating hour.

Chinese medicine says that waking up at 4 a.m. is terrible and has to stop.

But it also says that waking up between 3 and 5 in the morning is often due to an imbalance in the lungs, which is related to feelings of grief and sadness that haven’t been dealt with.

Grief was my number one feeling state in my thirties and I was hoping my forties would bring the prevalence of a different emotion, preferably joy or satisfaction, but I would honestly take any other emotion. Anger. Annoyance. Ennui.

Suggestions include breathing exercises, meditation or yoga to improve lung capacity, counseling to deal with your grief, and journaling about your emotions before bed each night.

None of those things sound appealing, probably because I’m suppressing a lot of grief. But I also want to get enough sleep to be able to function like a normal human.

I didn’t know organs could get exhausted, but it seems they do. My poor lungs are so tired. I just want to feed my lungs chicken soup and put them down for a nap.

Moral of the story: Our bodies have a deep wisdom and will give us guidance, if we're willing to listen.

So I either need to deal with my grief or resign myself to being exhausted and cranky for all time.

Joy Is Knocking On the Door

Yesterday afternoon, I wrote up a business plan.

Yesterday evening, I wrote “FUCK THIS” across the whole thing in blue felt tip marker.

One of my themes lately is doing things because I think I should, not because they bring me any particular joy. 

Reframing the oatmeal to bring you joy is always a possibility - even if that doesn’t make it taste like a fresh chocolate croissant - but it takes some effort. If you’ve let the joy drain out of you for so long that you don’t really remember what joy feels like or why you should make that effort, you’re screwed. (Meaning, I've screwed myself over a bit.)

So I’ve been thinking about joy and how to have some.

One of the things I've noticed about joy is that it’s like working out. You can’t just target your arms and do a bunch of weight lifting and expect your arms to look amazing. You still have to eat nutritious things and do cardio and work on your whole physical self before you get to have amazing arms. Unless you’re 23 and can thrive on pizza and tequila shots and still look amazing, in which case don’t talk to me.

You can’t just say “Hey, I want joy.” You have to target your whole emotional body. You have to feel all the things. Now, this is for those of us who habitually repress. Joy can be one of the easiest things in the world - just look at a happy baby. But if joy is hard to find, you’re probably a feelings represser like me.

After my dad's death, I went through a few years of enforced feelings because none of my well-honed repression techniques were working any more. Anger and frustration joined the grief standby of crying on the floor. The up side of my dad’s death was that joy came more easily, because all feelings came more easily.

But I don’t think that means that having joy requires a whole lot of grief. Joy just asks you to feel all your feelings, not just the fun ones.

Babies can be little joy machines - and they haven’t had to plow through deaths and breakups and getting fired and whatever else life likes throwing you as an adult. Babies find joy in flinging oatmeal onto the walls. Babies find joy in yanking the dog’s fur.

Sure, babies can be jerks and some of that joy comes at the expense of the caretaker who has to scrub the oatmeal off the wall and the dog who has to hide under furniture until the yank stops smarting, but joy is joy.

Babies get that kind of joy because 1) someone else will clean up for them and 2) they’re taking care of their whole emotional selves. If a baby is unhappy, you will know. Everyone in earshot will know. They aren’t repressing anything, they don’t know how. So as often as they shriek with utter abandon in the grocery store, they’re just as often beaming out instantaneous and effervescent joy.

It's time for joy again. Because joy is necessary for humans - and it can fuel all the other things that need to happen too, the ones like job-hunting and weed-pulling and tough-conversation-having that don't necessarily scream "Hey, this will bring you deep and abiding joy!" but will ultimately make your life better. 

We don't even need to make it that complicated. Because, hey, meeting a new tree brings me great joy:

Joy is Holding a Baby Goat

Someone once told me, “You really understand pain.” 

What a terrible tag line.

While I would argue that every human on this earth has a more thorough understanding of pain than they’d like, this is still true. Pain and I have been bunkmates on a fairly regular basis.

We could say that those who understand pain understand joy on a deeper level, but do we really want that to be true? Can’t joy just show up without needing a PhD in Ouch first?

Here’s a new world belief I would like to instill:

JOY HAS NO PREREQUISITES.

Doesn’t that sound nice? Can I call myself god and make it so? [Poof! It is done. You’re welcome, world.]

My real problem with pain is that sometimes I take a nice snack of pain and turn it into a multi-course meal of suffering. I need to stop doing that. Pain, fine. No one gets through life without some pain. But suffering is a more self-inflicted syndrome and I for one call bullshit on suffering.

I stopped writing for awhile, because I worried that I was getting whiny, what with all this pain and suffering and who wants to read that? But then my soul started shriveling up from lack of verbal expression and that’s not a good look on anyone.

Apparently, I would rather whine than let my soul shrivel. Or declare myself god and prescribe joy that doesn’t require an equal balance of suffering.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about this too hard, because clearly the only thing joy requires is a baby goat.

Here’s me and a baby goat in Half Moon Bay awhile back. It fell asleep in my arms. Best thing ever.

Where's My Montage?

Like so many of us, I’ve been trying to write a novel for, oh, thirteen years now. 

My first attempt was so long ago that the technology needed to access that draft no longer exists.

A few weeks ago, I took a class on plotting your novel, because I have a terrible habit of writing ten pages of some story that occurs to me and then forgetting about it completely. 

It’s not even giving up - giving up implies some form of active plan. Instead it just vanishes from my mind, like I’m a goldfish with a laptop. 

Having a plan in this area of my life might serve me well, even if plans do very little for me otherwise. So I show up to the class with my brand new Harry Potter moleskine and diligently take pages of notes.

When the instructor started talking about the crisis point that leads into the third act of a novel, I felt a deep sense of relief unwinding through my being.

I thought, “I’m not failing at life, I’m just at my crisis point.”

Someone please print that on a t-shirt, and make it available in pink.

I’m not sure why this was such a revelation, but I have an Instagram account and so maybe can be forgiven for thinking that life needs to be an endless upward cycle of victory.

Sure, my crisis point has lasted about a year - approximately 51 weeks longer than the crisis point in most movies (or maybe life isn’t served up in montage form, though it should be) - and instead of reaching a resolution, it seems to be extending itself via world circumstances and socially-isolated lockdown for the foreseeable future because apparently our lives have turned into a dystopian novel. (I never realized those were supposed to be instructional.) 

I’m now realizing that maybe I was in preparation for this moment. Maybe that’s all my crisis was about. I’m not sure why preparation had to be “Learn the lessons early” rather than “enjoy your last months outside with friends” but the universe works in mysterious ways. 

As for my novel, I’m not forcing anything right now. I’m going to let myself write for fun, write to entertain myself. Write something I would like to read, rather than something that feels Important. Because we are not required to write King Lear right now, plague or no plague.