Unpacking and Repacking

So peculiar.

It's after 11pm. In twelve hours, I am on a train to Portland, OR, to meet an aunt and an uncle and a cousin I have never met before.

I know I shouldn't really know how to feel, or try to imagine what someone else might be feeling and then be that. No, I should be authentic, and feel what it is I am feeling. Perhaps label it, or at least describe it in a gentle and objective tone. Truth is, I'm not sure what I am feeling right now. What I do know is that I've spent the day cleaning up for the girl who's coming over to watch the fuzzies. My house is practically clean, which is just shy of a miracle. My house is practically clean, and I have yet to pack a single thing. I just spent two hours in the bathtub, watching reruns of "The L Word". Being absorbed in someone's else's drama for a while.

This is the first Christmas I didn't go visit the family I already know. I recognized clearly in September what an emotional battleground it is for me to be with them. My defenses are always up, and I put up with some amount of degradation and obnoxiousness pretty regularly. I just wasn't up for it twice in one year. My mom understood, or at least took it amazingly well. I admit, I was shocked. But so, so, so grateful for her grace.

My choice to stay clear of the Schulers this year has now allowed me to accept an invite from the Devaney's. Well, from Bobby Devaney. He's my cousin, his mom is twin siblings with my biological father. I've met my biological father three times, for a grand total of two weeks. I haven't heard from him since the trip to Tahoe. The family reunion where I met Bobby. That was nine years ago. I was glad to meet Bobby then, and was even more glad to have kept in loose contact for almost a decade. A few weeks ago, he dropped me a line to say he was coming in town, and did I want to meet up? Of course I did, and while hanging out at his friend's graduation party, I talked him into letting me come visit him in the Las Vegas area. That's when he invited me down to Portland to meet the fam. Aunt Nancy and Uncle Robert (or Bob? who knows but me?) and my cousin ... damn I don't remember her name. She's got kids, though, two daughters I think. I don't know their names either.

So what I feel right now is some sadness, some grief. My mom and I were talking on Christmas about this trip and she said that it had been too long already. Meaning I guess that I should have met these people a long time ago, that I should have already developed relationships with this invisible family I've been toting around with me my whole life. A giant trunk full of mysterious heritage and genetics and traditions and infamous recipes and familial traits and stories ... there's a part of me that mourns the fact that I have been carting all of this around without having opened it yet. And I guess I have started opening it, back when I was fourteen and I asked my mom to help me find an address for my biological father, so that I could write him a letter.

But I think I'm also sad because it is this mystery that has defined me for so long, and, after tomorrow, that mystery is gone. More or less. It will no longer be Cecily, abandoned by her biological father. It will be Cecily, reunited with the other half of her birth family. In some way, my life as I know it will be over. It may still be some amazing story to outsiders, but it will mean something different because the ending will be different. It will no longer have that lusty sense of imagined neverhood... "perhaps I'll meet them....someday..." Instead, there will be a date and some time and descriptions and characteristics and actions and feelings. Very very very palpably real things.

I'm nervous they won't like me. More nervous that I won't like them. I'm getting sick of having family that I don't like. I've worked really really hard to like the family I know, with some moderate success. It's been some intense internal battles, and I have grown in incredible ways from having the family I have. But GOD, it's been a lot of work. And now...there is more family to meet. I guess I don't HAVE to keep in touch with them after this week. I mean, if we just really don't click, then we'll have that date and that time and those descriptions and characteristics and actions and feelings...and really we could just go on with our lives like nothing happened. It would be more like I was a boarder for a week, just passing through. There's no obligation to remember birthdays or to call or to track each other's lives. Because we've spent my whole life apart, they didn't even know I existed until a few years ago, so there's not like....god I don't know what this is like. I used to think that everyone's life is a bit fucked up and random like this, but I haven't seen this too often. There isn't a preforged path to read up on before I get on that train tomorrow. This is just me and my heart being brave and curious and ever so fucking hopeful that life is okay and that family is safe and loving and that I mean something to somebody. This is me feeling really frightened and awkward.

A few weeks ago, he dropped me a line to say he was coming in town, and did I want to meet up?

I have written this before. I have written this in a journal nearly a decade ago, when my biological father first called me on the phone. I wasn't home, and he left a message. I remember going numb. Stumbling into my bedroom and staring out at the pine tree outside the window of my Tallahassee apartment. I remember dropping back onto the bed, struggling to breathe. My heart was clutched with something warm and intense. It knew. It knew that This. Was. Huge. Huge and ultimately healing. It was excited to grow, regardless of whether it was into or past a relationship with this man, it was excited to grow out of the festering shithole of worthlessness it had been moping around in for 19 years. This man cared about me enough to pick up the phone and arrange a meeting. My God, did that just mean the entire world to me. I can't explain this incredible feeling of acceptance, of belonging, of beleiving, even for a second, that you're worth something to someone who is really important to you for reasons you can't explain and shouldn't have to.

I don't know what happened. I guess we just didn't click. I haven't heard from him in nine years.

But now there's Bobby. And Aunt Nancy. And Uncle Bob. And a girl cousin with her girl kids. And they are inherently different than my biological father and from each other. And I am willing to have no expectations of them. And I am willing to have this part of my life, the invisible family part with the victimology attached to it, die and fall away. I am willing to replace it with some memories of joy and surprise. I am willing to be whole, all on my own.

Ok. Now I am willing to pack for this adventure.

Sugar

Hmmm. So I imagine the sugar coma is wearing off, or the excitement of the day. Something. Perhaps an inherent rebalancing of energies. Perhaps one can only feel so free in one day, so connected.

Bah. It's all the damn sugar.

Like standing on a beach, gawking, awestruck at the gorgeousness of it all. The sparkling sand, the motion of the sea, the joyful cries of the gulls, the wind pressing gently through the wispy fronds of palms...and then the swell rolls back and punches you square in the face and sends you crashing into the sopping wet grit, pinning you there breathless and terrified until it passes...

Yeah. It's the sugar.

It started with the pumpkin cheesecake and the Cougar Mountain cookies at the Puget Sound Blood Center this morning. Apparently decandently processed baked goods are a well-known therapeutic support for acute anemia and blood volume loss. Who knew?

Then there was the multiple samples of honey and jam as I meandered through Pike Place Market.

A few hours later, Tree presents me with a chocolate-coated sugar bomb known only as "the Zoka Bar". After I eat about half of it, she pulls it away from me and redirects me to an apple, claiming it only took her two bites of it before she felt sick. I kid you not, I felt myself just sort of flitter straight out of my mind for a good few hours, even after a full-on sushi dinner at Liberty. The waiter there had such a good sense of humor, allowing me to call him "Man-Cub" and beckon him multiple times. Hysterical giggling ensued. The trip to Walgreens' didn't help, especially since the first thing we saw was a gigantic (I mean, gigantic) remote control. But I did score some fantastic neon striped toe socks that you will have to ask very, VERY nicely if you wish to see me in them ( * Thanks Tree!!! * )

My consciousness began to fade into gray as Tree drove me home. As I sat numbly absorbed in reruns of "House" I nibbled a bit on the secret chocolate stash.

I don't really listen to myself when I tell myself "no".

So fucking help me when I get on a sugar binge.

Stuff I Write That Could Be Called ... Poetry

Here's some of my new favorites that I've written recently:

10.21.07

Leave of myself
only beauty
only time will leak
it out of me
only the presence
of others
will that beauty be seen
and heard
and felt

Right now my presence is with
ache
and disgust
and malice
and ill thought

the knives of destruction
all pointing at me
their blades like starving
glistening teeth of
hungry wolverine demons
I grit my teeth
bound to my own resolve
I know this too shall pass
along with the slapping self knowledge
that I did this to myself

Perhaps I will remember next time the hedonist is tempted
Perhaps I will be stronger next time
or more centered
or more prepared
or more forgiving

Perhaps I will no longer echo the legacy of
not being enough
and instead
submit to love.

The flash of the knife quickly snaps me back to present
As the demons swirl and dance around me
drawing nearer
They are already inside
rallied awake by wine
and cheesecake
One of them licks my neck
tasting, admiring, yearning
and I give in
a whore to the archetype of the boundary-less victim

Bind me, drag your blade down my thigh
force my legs open wide
open
I am open
and cannot reach out for the security of your embrace
only the ropes will hold me

Silently
secretly
even to myself
I beg the blade deeper
for the tip to disappear underneath dermis
underneath layers of self loathing, but oh!
how deep the knife must go
to find that layer.

And I think of words like "Never" and "When"
and "Will I ever"
as the hateful blackness wraps its arms around me
holding me warmly to its breast
smelling of all of the comforts of
Home.

Rivers of woe pour down my chest
my body getting off on self loathing
Where is the flipswitch, the reset button,
I wonder.

I shovel pills into my mouth
Liver Enzymes
B Vitamins
in hopes of a better day
tomorrow

Nothing has changed much in ten years
still a pill for every problem
A lot has changed, though
Process of progress is simply shrouded now in darkness

I know it is there
waiting for my return
from my kinky bondage trip with self loathing
drugged by food and indulgence,
led on by sadness and dodging self care
pushing and pushing and pushing past the mirror
which has had nothing lovely to say as of late.

I long to love myself.

I am building this concept from scratch
I got some chicken wire
and a few branches off of an apple tree
a few squash seeds
and some straw bales
left over from haunted trails
a tea light
and a teddy bear
some no VOC paint
and a safety flare
a blanket I crocheted myself

and a mirror
that I'd rather break
Thirteen years bad luck is the least of my concern.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

11.7.07

Congestion

My question
to you is this:

Have you any purpose
other than to reintroduce myself
to the physical boundaires of
my self?

My feet long for wet cold river stones
sharp pressing into my soles
stoicly absorbing
Congestion

making space for movement

Go slow now. Keep yourself.
Together with stillness and
silence, movement occurs.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

November 2007



What if

I wasn't needed

yet still adored?



What if

I wasn't adored

yet still missed?



What if

I wasn't missed

yet still remembered fondly?



Where do the butterflies go

when the flowers are gone

when the winter rains

soak the roots

and rot sinks in?

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

11.18.07

For all those sobbing empathics
and those stone-faced indwellers;

I've got a news flash.

It's okay to cry.
A lot.
Whenever you need to.
In whatever way feels safest.

You will not die from crying.

You will not melt.

You will not offend
Me.

It's okay to cry for seemingly no reason
for there is always reason a reasonable mind can't fathom

It's okay to misunderstand youself on a regular basis.

It's okay to grieve the loss of family
even as they surround you
gazing at you
glazing their view
making up facts and associations
to hang on you like the corpse of a Christmas tree
don't forget: you still have a heartbeat
and must make room to
breathe.

Sometimes it is you grieving for them
so that they may remain blissfully ignorant
of their pain.

You get to choose what you grieve, you know.

Some things are worth crying for.

For example: Did you ever know how bad I wanted a dad?
Tall and strong
in mind and heart and soul and arms?
who gives solid hugs with his heart
and listens with consideration
and asks questions about me
and laughs from his belly
and ruffles my hair when he calls me kiddo
who is confidently authentically honest

what a tall bill for someone to fill

I can expect things from other people
all I want
but should I put my heart into it?

She still has a few cracks and crevices
left over from the last time she fell
and broke into a million pieces

There is still peace missing
There are still pieces missing
perhaps they fell under the bed
or rolled away under the dresser
It's all I can do to hold her together
sometimes

she'd love to have her expectations met
she'd love to be loved and to love again
she'd love to be cradled and held and heard and adored and
swung around in circles
by her arms
by her dad
who is laughing
from his belly with her
out loud

It's okay to cry
to grieve the imaginings of a memory.

So if you start to get teary
in front of your family
who has mistaken you for
the Christmas tree
or a piece of furniture

Tell them you're taking care of business
Tell them you're takng care of them
and that there's only so much longer
that this will take place
Tell them they should start taking notes
on grieving
on what it is that you're doing
for them
So they'll have a clue of what to do
when you take off
the ornaments and the tinsel and the lights
and give them back
their grief.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

12.17.07

Penmanship
is another form of

PROPER APPROPRIATE COMPLETED BOXES

that I have been known to cut myself upon

bleeding into myself, I reclaim my blood,
marvel at the open wounds, lick them and step
forward

only by the grace of Spirit
in the form of a friend in a coyote mask
raven feathers dangling, smoking sage burning
melting sharp edges into
gentle streams of soothing laughter
tumbling along with the flow of the rattle

PALPABLE PEACEFUL CONNECTION

This is real, and unbelievable
because if I were to believe that this kind of "real"
were truly my life
my heart would surely break wide open from
inexplicable and tremendous joy

Could I dare to go there again?
I must.
If I wish to live, I must.

It is within the flow of community and connection
that I wish to live
So go there I must.
Armed with courage and faith and trust
that sometimes a broken heart can be a welcomed event.

A broken heart
A heart broken
wide open
by love
can be taught to receive love again
in that moment.

Mirrors for eyes
courage like a tree trunk
with roots in the heart
with branches in the arms
with leaves in the mouth

FLOW IS SOLID

Impenetrably gentle.

Thank you teacher.
Thank you friend.

One thing I love about Seattle...

...is that it's currently NOT under twelve inches of snow with more on the way.....or under sheets of ice, leaving humankind generally powerless.....or under the threat of multiple hurricanes.....unlike my family and the rest of the country.

Give me gray skies with a little spittle any day.

Here's praying for safety and warmth to all those who need it this winter season.

Answers and Expectations

I just realized this morning that my head is full of answers.

For the longest time, and still to this day, I have always asked questions. When I hear someone claim a phenomenon, my first impulse is to ask "Why?" of "What if?" When I was little, my mom even went so far as to limit the amount of "Why"'s I could ask before I had to ask another question. At some point, I must've realized that some questions "don't have answers" (which really means that the person I was asking didn't know the answer) and that some questions were not going to be answered anytime soon. Sometimes questions were answered with more questions.

I was, and still am, simply trying to make sense of this world. Seeking answers. Trying to convince myself that it was safe and worth it to stick around. Looking back on my life, I can see that my entire young adult life was spent seeking answers to the plethora of questions I had about the world I was seeing and what it was telling me about myself. So many questions about what was going on inside of me, inside of my head and my heart. From counseling and psychiatric hospitalizations in high school and college, to a degree in Neuroscience, to working in group homes, to becoming a naturopathic physician.

And the answer always depended on who I was asking.

If it was a psychiatrist, usually the answer was related to a idiopathic biochemical imbalance of neurotransmitters that is likely genetic in origin and can be regulated through the new latest and greatest expensive creation of mankind. This particular one helped me lose a lot of trust and faith in mankind, research, and modern-day society in general. That whole system, from my perspective, is based upon the patient giving up trust in themselves for trust in what's ultimately a higher power, yet its a higher power comprised of the same perfectly fallible human beings that the system's trying to treat. It implies a judgment and a power differential, one that says, "You're more crazy than I am" I say Horse Shit.

If it is a shamanic practitioner, the answer might be that I've lost multiple soul parts during the course of my life and the gaps were filled in by whatever resident spirit or energy was lurking about at the time. I may have also been invaded by other energies in a more forceful manner. Now my soul needs a clearing, some extraction work, and then the soul parts need to be called home and placed back in my body. Then I must parent them and reintegrate these parts into the soul, for they have been gone a long time and aren't familiar with the new older version of me. Again, there's the giving up of power, but it seems much more temporary. This time, there's more emphasis on the patient working towards health. The reintegration process encourages things like counseling, craniosacral and massage therapies, and basic attention and awareness paid to whatever came through for you in a soul retrieval.

If it's a Sacred Contracts counselor, perhaps then the answer is about introducing and integrating the twelve archetypes that agreed to accompany you throughout this lifetime as you carry out your life purpose.

If it's a mental health counselor, it's about tempering the moment into self-reflection, regardless of what happened in the past to whom by whom in whatever fashion.

Despite having all of the aforementioned treatments, I still have moments of tremendous anger, or grief, or giddyness. I still have days of foggy-headedness and irritability. I still can't seem to follow a healthy diet or exercise routine. I have the expectation that somehow I can be fixed; that when I achieve optimal health, these things won't be experienced. I have the expectation that I'm not an endless vat of sorrow, or mania, or unbridled emotion of any sort. I have the expectation that I can be explained.

SO.....what if:

I am not fixable.

I am not broken.

I am in optimal health.

I experience things like anger and grief and giddyness.

I am an endless vat of sorrow.

I am an endless vat of mania.

I am an endless vat of unbridled emotion.

I cannot be explained.

What if I broke these expectations, and loved myself anyway?

What I need...

...I always get.

I have so much rolling around in my head, and I can't seem to smooth it out and make it linear and compact it into letters and words and sentences and stuff.

It seems that Spirit is speaking to me in a very loud and obvious voice sometimes, now more than ever, and yet the messages are still unclear. It's also confounded by the Voices of Self-Doubt. There's a part of me that is tellimg myself that I'm flat-out crazy, and only looney toons walk around spouting "Spirit says" quotes, and what kind of doc am I going to be with my head thoroughly stuck in the clouds and completely surrendered to the whims of the universe, etc.

And I am sad. Underneath sadness is some anger, and a bucketload of anxiety, with some frustration and exhaustion mixed in. This life is so much work, like all I came here to do this time was just fucking work on my shit: all the shit from the past 28 years, all the shit from the last life, and the ones prior to it. It just seems like all it is is work, and all I want to do is play and relax and actually enjoy life a little bit. I'm so worn-out and depleted, and very very grateful to have about a month off to recuperate, rethink, revive, relax, reeducate, realign, remember things like joy and deep breathing and things that work for me.

Things I plan on doing over break:
Reading at least two books, just for fun.
Creation, at least once a week.
Exercise, at least twice a week.
Staying horizontal for as long as I can.
Sitting quietly for as long as I can.
Clean out the spare room and make it into a Spirit Crash Pad.
Tie up someone cute and submissive, and do at least two mean things to them (with their permission, of course)

work, work, work.

I read something inspirational the other day, entitled Anonymity is for Pussies. I appreciated this man's standpoint. It is something I considered as I simultaneously enter both the medical professional and the kink community. And I realize that anonymity, while serving some purpose for those who choose it, doesn't sit well with me, and doesn't allow me to be fully authentic in each moment. So I'm a kinky medical student that can hopefully learn enough about both to eventually be of service to both. And that's only two of the many hats I wear. Shapeshifter, shapeshifter...

Off to see my beautiful Ryan sing in the Seattle Men's Chorus...oh what a treat! Likely I will recall that angels and miracles still exist tonight...Ryan has that effect on me.

Ache

Ache.

What are all the ddx's for a headache?

Toothgrinding. Too much coffee. Too much sugar. Not enough water. Not enought sunlight. Not enough protein. Allergic reaction. Nonallergic reaction. Pulled cervical muscle. Infection. Detoxing chemicals.

I had a craniosacral therapist tell me there was an adjustment to be had way deep inside my skull. I believe it. I had a habit for smashing my head into fireplaces as a kid.

I have wondered recently about such things. The small misalignments and maladjustments in our physical beings being amplified into disease states. How a misaligned bone in my skull may be the root to my deep mistrust of others, for example. Once the adjustment sets in, the emotional/mental quality shifts.

What do I know? I know that pain is a signal to the body that something is wrong. If someone is in pain, something is wrong. While I know a few people for whom pain is pleasurable, I know no one who finds chronic pain tolerable without the use of analgesics.

So what's wrong? Is it really worth sitting here, pondering the cause of the headache? I would think knowing the cause would facilitate the healing by directing the treatment plan, but there will be and have been times where one just doesn't know. And other times when the best treatment is time.

God, my whole face hurts.

Press On

There's this one very cool thing about "growing up" and that is being able to have your buttons pressed (or smashed) and have the wherewithal to just sit with it. Sit with the anger, the wrongdoing, the bruised ego, and simply marvel at the experience. Sit with the knowledge that you have let this experience into your consciousness somehow, for some reason or non-reason. Sit with the process of discerning the pathway in, the doorway through which it came, the locks and windows on the door, and deciding if that's a good place for a door, anyway.

I am really digging this "honoring-my-feelings" bit. I had a colleague step on my toes out of self-proclaimed overactive OCD, and for a good while, I really let myself BE ANGRY. I called her names, I flipped her off, I sang nasty songs to her, I plotted humiliating revenge tactics for her (all in the privacy of my own home, mind you)...and then I laughed. Out loud. A lot. Because this girl is my friend and her honesty combined with her desire to run a smooth-sailing ship is admirable and honorable and I really love and appreciate every single thing she brings to the table and I know I am very blessed and grateful to have her in my life. I laughed again. All of the anger fell away so easily after I was able to reply honestly, and witness it being received in an honest, open and nonjudgmental way.

It's really hard to be angry when your needs are being met.

Anger = Unmet Desire (thank you Char)

So now that I can sit with getting my buttons pushed, the next thing might be to become bold in saying what is so. In commanding the flow or a moment as opposed to subjecting myself to it. In disciplining myself into self-love and self-respect...or maybe it will be just to stop smoking...ah geez. When the lessons all have similar roots, it's hard to know where to start...so let's start everywhere. Make small changes every day, and make every day worth learning about and worth living from.

*beaming bursts of loving ecstacy for you and me and everyone in between and out there somewhere*

Spirit Talk

...so I was outside for a nightly smoke, wondering which season of "House" to plug in and watch for the evening, when a westerly spirit came to visit. Her advice tonight was to write instead.

So I give this session up to that spirit, and Spirit in general, starting......now:

Great winds of the West, bringing rain
bringing comfort
bringing clarity
and cleansing

what do we have here?
what do we as humans, have here
here, now, in this moment
in this rain?

we have drops on asphalt
we have a damp chill
that brings us into our bodies
that we draw into our lungs and our heart
that we may be reminded
of our one true precious gift
of breath
of life

the maple stands strong to the north of me
how many raindrops has she felt?
as many wild thoughts as I have felt?
as many deep impressions as we have collected
like the spiky seedlings scattered from her
with the wind?

asking questions
does more
than
answering them
sometimes

i ache
as I break
away
from
old expectations
and resurface
only to find
more
there

is it unrealistic
to expect
lack of expectation?

inside
warmth
and uneasiness
the usual state of
disarray
that I keep
in defiance
of the box of order

I keep
with me
only light
and memory
they complement one another
one would not be without the other

my heart speaks
in multiple tongues
simultaneously
harmonizing
as one
and yet
the message
is mangled
sometimes
the message
is unclear
sometimes
the thought
interferes with such gusto
as if it's life depended on
interfering
referee-ing
juggling
the wild thoughts
the deep impressions

like my mother
standing in the doorway
witness to my anguish
unknowing
perhaps helpless
perhaps voiceless
longing to make things right
for me
when things were right
for me
all along

I signed up for this
as did you
I signed up for the experience
of helplessness
of anguish
of wild thoughts and deep impressions
knotted up with
the passion
to make things right

undo the knots
sink deeper
beyond wild thoughts
past deep impressions
into this body
into this life
it is our one precious gift
to breathe
into this body