Lap Tiger

My boyfriend went to a pet psychic, because that’s what we do in this house. 

He was concerned that Cosmo, our boy cat, was beating up on his sister Sera. They’re siblings, born to a stray cat on the property around the time my boyfriend and I got together. They make little chirping sounds and enjoy eating rodents and watching TV with us. Sera is especially fond of Jamie Oliver’s cooking show.

According to the psychic, Cosmo has always been a dog in the past - most recently a German Shepherd - and was just rough-housing with his sister because that’s how he enjoys interacting. But Sera was acting traumatized because she’s used to being at the top of the food chain. She’s always been a big cat, like a lynx or a lion, and being harassed by a nine-pound domesticated house pet is a real comedown for her.

All this explains why Cosmo follows us around to beg for attention while Sera is weird about being touched and her main hobby is racing out of the room to hide under a large piece of furniture.

Despite her skittishness, I’ve started calling her my lap tiger. Proud queen of the household who occasionally deigns to sit near me.

What To Do About Self-Doubt

I wanted to say “What to do about crippling, soul-sucking, anxiety-ridden self-doubt” but that seemed overly dramatic. But also not a bad description of where my self-esteem has been lately.

So I’m in a steady process of rebuilding my trust in myself and recalibrating my health - mental, physical, and emotional. Which has become quite a task, I don’t mind telling you.

I read French Women Don’t Get Fat and now we’re eating insane amounts of vegetables and whatever delicious meat is on sale at the market, plus a croissant on Saturday mornings because pastry is crucial to any French diet. I’m making sure I move my meat suit - either up the hill in the back of the house or through a yoga video or with those weights I always glare at. I’m trying to catch myself when I retrace my steps into the land of regret or stray toward the horizon of “oh my god, what’s going to happen next”. I’m not allowed to guilt myself or beat myself up or otherwise be a silent jerk.

Daily Trust Exercises (#DTE) have been instituted. That hash tag doesn’t represent some social media community of fellow trust brethren, it’s so I don’t have to write out all three words on every to-do list I write. Without that hashtag I would’ve already quit.

My first #DTE was “Get all your crap out of the hall, Amber.” After going through every single thing I own and deciding whether or not to keep it, I had a freshly re-organized office (bliss), an accidental capsule wardrobe (no more guilt over all those things I never wear), and a hall full of the random detritus I needed to get rid of post-cull. After staring at the hall o’ junk for a week, I decided that Day Number One of Amber Rebuilds Her Trust In Herself was going to feature getting all my shit out of that damn hall. And I did. (Mostly.)

Since my trust in myself would’ve plummeted straight into a fiery pit if I made it contingent on day-long escapades into Things I’ve Been Avoiding, I’ve made the subsequent #DTEs more manageable.

Currently, my daily “do the thing you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it so you can trust yourself again” is meditation. Not my usual agenda-ridden meditation of “I want an answer to this question” or “make me feel better about this thing” or “tell me what my next business idea is and also how it will make money” because all that just stresses me out, which is contrary to the general theory and principle of meditation. Instead, my #DTE requires returning to meditation 1.0, aka Chill The Fuck Out And Let Your Brain Stop For a Hot Second.

I’m not very good at it.

But being good at it isn’t the point. Doing it is the point.

Slowly and surely, I’m learning to trust myself again. Trust myself to not be a flaming jerk to myself, trusting myself to do what I say I’ll do, trusting myself to do the things that help.

Taking Each Moment As It Comes

I’m sitting on our freshly-planted grass and hoping a bee doesn’t land on me. I like bees, I just don’t like them anywhere near my skin with their stingers.

Sonoma County just re-opened its beaches for properly social distant activities and this excites me even more than the buttermilk I bought for Saturday’s pancakes. Sand and sea keeps me sane and showers and rubbing salt all over my skin haven’t been sufficient.

I was off the internet for almost a full month to make some big life decisions. Getting off social media helped a whole lot more than expected. I love social media, but sometimes it’s like taking a cheese grater to my soul.

(If the internet drives you crazy too, here’s something that will help.)

In the midst of those big life decisions, I had to get very present. Sometimes that’s the only way to curb the anxiety spiral. Be fully in each moment as it’s happening, and trust the future to take care of itself.

Taking each moment as it comes is practically a requirement when the world is spinning enthusiastically off its axis. It soothes the nervous system to just notice what’s going on around you - the sound of the sprinkler hitting the grass, the smell of barbecue, the cat hiding in a flower pot to better stalk rodents. From that point of peace, we have a better connection to the small voice that knows what’s next, and can guide us there.

No mouse is safe.

Climbing Off the Struggle Bus

This morning I was crying in bed, something that happens a lot, which could mean many things, but I like to think it means I’m listening to my therapist when he said “You need to cry every day.” He later added, “You need to be with a man who lets you cry on his shoulder,” which seems reasonable and I try to keep that in mind whenever the To Be With Or Not To Be With question presents itself.

So I was following my therapist’s wellness advice this morning and crying in bed on my boyfriend’s shoulder because I felt so overwhelmed.

Our two cats had long since vacated the premises (because I sneezed which, at this point in our collective history, means I’m either going to die or infect the world with coronavirus so I guess we can forgive the cats for fleeing), so it was just me, my tears, my boyfriend, his shoulder, and the posed question:

“What’s below the tears, overwhelm, and worry?”

After a lot of talk about money and work, and do we mean enough money to buy an island or enough to not worry about bills or food and also maybe get a massage every so often? (I seemed to come down on the side of the island and he came down on the side of Less Worry), I finally got to a nice tangled knot that needed unraveling.

Turns out, my ego and identity are based on struggle.

If I’m not struggling, I won’t exist.

All the things that make me a worthy human, all the things that make me me, require sacrifice and struggle. Writing, helping, making enough money to live where I want to live and do what I want to do - my brain has made it all very hard. Practically impossible. Certainly not going to happen any time soon. Which means that I am not me because I am struggling, but I can’t be me without the struggle.

If that doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry. Screwy belief systems rarely make sense in the bright light of day. What seems so pressing and real when it’s suppressed suddenly seems ridiculous when it becomes conscious.

So let’s just let the main point sink in for a moment: If I’m not struggling, I won’t exist.

Yes, that right there is belief system designed to result in a crappy life tied up in a bow.

It was kind of a lot for a Tuesday morning before coffee.

So I made coffee and climbed back in bed with my notebook and made a bunch of lists, which is the appropriate response to profound epiphanies like YOU WILL BE A SHELL OF A HUMAN UNLESS YOU ARE SUFFERING ALWAYS.

Ultimately, I decided that I need to treat my ego and her need to make us both miserable so that she can stay alive like a friend. A misguided friend, but one who has your best interests at heart even if she calls your boyfriend to break up with him for you and then calls your boss demanding to be fired. She meant well, she just wanted to save you pain, but she went about it in an ill-conceived manner.

Me and my ego sat at the beach for awhile (the beach in my head, not a real beach, because real beaches are closed right now so humanity can stay alive?) and we came to a new understanding. She can insist that suffering is vital and necessary and I can remind her that there are other options and maybe we can find them together.

She seems to like that. There’s a lot in the spiritual community about transcending your ego and wrestling it to the ground or eradicating it completely, but that seems to be missing the point. Your ego is just another part of you. You don’t have to let her run the show (stop it, Amber), but letting her speak her piece and then reminding her that there are other ways, ways that will make everyone happier, allows a wholeness and a gentleness that we all need right now.

Meditation Broke Me

All I did yesterday was lie on the couch meditating.

(Where “all I did” also includes eating, petting cats, falling asleep while meditating, and watching Outlander.)

For the past few days, I kept getting “go in” “time to meditate” and “stop procrastinating, Amber”. So I finally collapsed onto the couch four separate times and went down into the quantum layers of my being. Which is a fancy way of saying “lying on the couch doing nothing.”

Here’s what I interpret as Quantum Being Layers: I would shut my eyes and be taken somewhere - to a crystal cave, to the depths of my shadowy here’s-where-I’m-going-to-stuff-everything-I-don’t-want-to-deal-with, to a field where my guides would show up and say things. Basically, I just try to shut up my brain and let my soul take the wheel and show me what needs to happen.

The first meditation was great - I loved all the orphaned pieces of myself until I felt whole again. The next two meditations were murkier - I fell into old patterns of feeling like I had to manipulate light and fix myself (implying that I am broken) and generally just working really hard, rather than resting and receiving.

After I trudged into the kitchen after the third meditation - looking a lot more bedraggled than before I started - my boyfriend said “I think meditation broke you” which was fair.

So for the last meditation, I did my best to just love all the bits of myself that I want to shove away and blame for the parts of my life that I don’t like so much.

This is a time for us to quiet. To rest. To return to ourselves and the deepest layers that are asking for love and attention.

(It’s also a time to watch Outlander and pet cats.)

There’s no way to do this strange moment in time wrong. Just keep asking to be shown and given what you need, and trust that it will show up in the right way at the right time and, yes, I really hope that also works for toilet paper.