therapy

Looking at my house this morning, one could only assume that I'd had a very busy and very good weekend.

My favourite pair of heels had been abandonded in front of the closet, one of them tipped over after I tripped on it rushing out the next morning. The bed was pushed over about 6 inches and there was a pile of [redacted] that had ended up on top of my dressing table after being moved around in a clump from flat surface to flat surface. There were clothes hanging to dry in the spare room, there were piles of dirty clothes on the floor in every room. There were clothes hanging on the doorknob in the bathroom.

The main floor fared no better. A big pile of dishes, pepitas left in the oven after roasting. Clean clothes hanging in the bathroom. Dirty yoga clothes in a pile on the stairs. Bulk food still sitting in bags on the counter after being bought Saturday morning.

One would be right.

It was a very busy and very good, and in some ways very hard, weekend. The very good included a Sunday night friendly friend potluck, a Friday night puttering by myself (2 loads of laundry! 2 episodes of Top Chef! 1 giant bowl of soup! 2 beers!), a shit hot Saturday night with D.Jack, which can be further subdivided into three categories of overlapping fun, including live music at Raw Sugar and nice drinks and food at the Moon Room and a whole pile of [redacted] at my house.

The bulk of my days, however, was taken up with hours worth of yoga anatomy instruction. It was crazy useful (who knew the foot has three arches!) but fucking hard. It's hard for me to sit for 5 hours straight, no matter where I am or what I'm doing. Add a second-day bleeding backache to that, add a few hours in stilettos to that, add some brutally hard concentrated yoga to that, and by Sunday at 2 pm I was severely uncomfortable.

And then we started on the shoulder work.

It's hard for me to do shoulder work no matter, since my shoulders are square but not strong. But add to that a possibly sadistic teacher who had us do said shoulder work with the soles of our feet pressed together and brought as close to our crotches as we could and by about 8 minutes in I was crying, because that is what happens when I spread my legs and externally rotate my femurs.

I'm pretty down with that. I've been therapized up the yin-yang, and I'm not so sure I've got much else to say to a kind person who is listening without stake to my babbles. At some point you need to just let the fuck go of what you learned to hold onto. What I am holding onto, I am holding somewhere in my hips and hamstrings.

I'm good with doing that in yoga, I'm good at managing its public manifestations. But add to that a sore back, add to that various floods of cyclical hormones, add to that sore legs, add to that the swirls of nausea that sometimes accompany the leak of tears, add to that a room full of strangers who didn't want to partner with the weird tattooed girl with the hairy armpits and oh, oh, I was hollowed out, leaving the potluck in the first wave, crawling into sheets that still smelled like d.jack and falling hard enough asleep that the firecrackers didn't wake me up.

After 6 weeks of hauling my ass to Vanier and back, I can tell you that the most efficient and stress-free mode of transport is bicycle.

Last week, I drove, because the bus was driving me to distraction, and taking forever. Like waiting a half hour, like taking a half hour to get to the Rideau Centre from St. Laurent. So I took the car, even took the highway, totally forgetting that sometimes you have to pay for parking. I was out of the parking lot at about 5:05, and walked into my kitchen at 5:26.

It probably would have been 5:19, if I hadn't stalled out three times trying to cross Percy at Gloucester. Still not so great with the hill starts.

Tonight I left the parking lot at about the same time, after fixing my helmet and getting myself sorted.

5:34.

It took me 8 minutes more to bike home than to drive. Didn't stall once.

The mindfulness is almost done, only two more classes. I could probably be getting a lot more out of it than I am, because I don't do any of the homework they say you should do, for aforementioned reasons.

Not to say that I'm not getting good stuff out of it.

The group leader used the white board for the first time today. She wrote the word STRESS, then under it ASSESSMENT, then under that THREAT. Under that, three words: fight, flight or freeze.

Humans are simple. Faced with a threat, that's basically what we got.

The idea, the one that I'm finding the most useful, is that the fact of that will never change.

With all my therapy and whatnot, I think the underlying expectation has been that I would stop feeling certain ways. Not that my therapists might say that, but that's what I've been wanting. I want to stop feeling whatever when this horrible thing happens. Because it feels bad and I don't like it.

This course is allowing me to know - not just realize or think, but to bodily know - that I won't. I'm likely to be dead before I stop responding to stressful situations by either freezing up or wanting to flee to the wilderness.

But I can stop actually doing it, and I'm slowly gaining the tools to be able to do so.

It's a comfort, and worth all those damn distracting bus rides.

As the intake appointment pointed out afresh, I've been in some bad situations and had some bad people happen to me.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly already knows that I spend many an evening sitting at my archipelago in front of my computer. While I'm fucking around on the internet or with words, usually either the stereo or the radio is on. Wednesday night it was the radio, and I wasn't paying enough attention to turn it off when Outfront started.

Generally I don't like Outfront. Not that I haven't heard some good ones, but more often they grate. They often seep the things I dislike about the CBC, in particular a kind of white-bread mawkishness that an acquaintance of mine once described as "the colour of band-aids."

The reason I noticed the radio was on at all Wednesday night was because the woman's voice was grating that band-aid grate on me, enough so that I zoned in and actually heard what she was saying. She was describing a horrific childhood, filled with physical abuse and terror.

It was a good reminder for me. Because people don't often talk about their trauma, it is easy to feel singular in it. Alone, yes, but also the flip side: special. Both are dangerous in their own ways.

In the grand scheme of things, the bad things that happened to me weren't so bad; or at least, they could have been much worse. My parents are decent people, nice even, and they loved me and were proud of me. Us kids never wanted for anything real. Both my parents had tempers that were hot and quick, which they took out on each other and us with regularity. Though my brother, sister and I grew up in a house that I would classify as angry and unpredictable, it was not without love.* Between 17 and 23 were not so much fun, but I don't feel like going into why.**

When your afternoon starts with a shouldn't-be-but-is startling reminder of how awful your story sounds when even the matter-of-fact redux version is the one hanging out there in the air, it is good to hear the story of someone else's. To feel not alone, not special: just is. Is what we live with. With lesser, and sometimes greater, success.

*Which would, and you may be shocked by this, also perfectly describe my two 4 year long relationships.
**If you're good with the searching, you can dig up why. And rest assured, I'll write about it more later.

My afternoon started with an intake appointment to get myself into a Mindfulness-Based Stress Management course. Not that I'm stressed out, not anything unusual for everyday life, at any rate.

Over the past year, say, I've been getting more interested in meditation on its own, rather than just as part of yoga. I tried the buddhists, but I'm far too much of a dilettante to fit in with monks.* I've also looked at a couple of courses around town, but they're only one or two hours long, and I know that I'd go, learn lots of good stuff, and not do fuck all with it ever again.

And then Jamine wrote about mindfulness. I got the book Full Catastrophe Living out of the OPL.

It was what I was looking for. It's based on a 8-week program that's a mixture of yoga and various meditation practices, with strong roots in cognitive behavioural therapy.

Long enough to get me into the habit, with a little bit of this and that, with lots of talking about myself.

Perfect.

Anyroad, before you can do the course, you chat with one of the leaders to see if you and the program are suited to each other. It was like most initial appointments with a therapist. I did a brief run through of my history, which I have done exactly one half million times, to my friends, to partners, to therapists, to myself. No biggie.

The facts of what happened to me in my late teens and early 20s are pretty matter of to me by this point. I can talk about them while smiling, though those paying close attention will notice that I am doing that thing with my hands that I do when I am talking about something upsetting.

Driving back to San Francisco from Davis, on the way home, I made a passing reference to CT about my beleaguered early 20s. He said "I don't really know about what happened to you. You don't talk much about it." Surprised me, since I'd told him the story in NOLA. But it's so rehearsed at this point that the whole mess of it can be contained in 2 minutes and about 5 neat sentences.

"No, I don't talk that much about it any more." I thought for a second. "I harped on it for a long time; it was such a huge part of my identity. I got kind of tired of it, I guess. And far enough away now that it feels like it happened to someone else altogether."

As I was talking today during the intake, the therapist's face became more and more serious, more drawn, more concerned. She used words like abuse and trauma, words I allow to spill only very cautiously from my own lips.

I sometimes forget that I have lived through some unpleasant things.

It was a small shock, and a bit satisfying to remember. I often wonder why I get weird in in relationships, why I'm generally happier single, why I do this daft thing, repeat that same mistake ad nauseum.

Like the concern on her face was something I could point to and say, to myself, "Oh! See? Right! This is why you're fucked up the way you're fucked up. I mean, no wonder. Sheesh. Stop being so damn hard on yourself.

You're legit."

A strange satisfaction, an odd comfort. Nonetheless.

*Not to mention that every time I hear the word buddhist, I also hear Adam's voice saying "Karma is bullshit. What, someone gets raped because they did something wrong to that person in a past life? No."

All that fakey-fake middle-class faux-enlightenment inspirational bumf (cf. Oprah, Lululemon, Starbucks) says that you should do one thing every day that scares you.*

I am a creature of habit. I rarely do things that scare me. Unless you consider ordering the special omelette at brunch a scary activity.

Unless you consider saying yes to too many things.

Here in Ottawa, spring has sprung. I haven't had a whole evening at home by myself since last Sunday, and won't until this Wednesday. An evening I will spend holed up writing a book review to send in just under the wire for Shelley.

Wow.

I just went through the list of things that I need to do, people I want to see, commitments I've made, in the next week and I can actually feel the stress coalescing just under my sternum. My chest is feeling tight, my diaphragm has contracted up. It's like a slowly twirling ball of TV static, throwing sparks off down my nerves.

One of the things that is freaking me out is the workshop I signed myself up to give tomorrow. Giving a yoga workshop seemed like a good idea when I offered, but though I know yoga, and I know giving workshops, I've never put the two together and I'm pretty freaked out that it's going to go badly.

And did I mention the reading? On May 3rd? For which I don't have anything new written and my time to write is being slowly eaten up by other things I've said yes to and are really important to me to do? Yeah. That.

Also, and. That my grandmother is sick in the hospital? Apparently okay, but she broke her teeth when she was hallucinating during a fever on Friday? I'm going home on the 8th to visit.

And perhaps I said something about buying a house? Which is a good decision but a big decision and I think it's finally sinking in now that the busy running around schedule shifting part of it is done.

And also maybe did I say that I'm dating again even though I still sometimes cry when I think about Eric and how much I loved him and how fucking much it hurt when he told me he felt like he hadn't been a very good boyfriend and intimated that he couldn't do better, not right then, not for me? And that I'd picked the wrong person, again? When I was sure that I hadn't?

And one of these things is something that I'm going to fuck up, and something awful is going to happen. I'll look like a fool, someone will get hurt. Possibly badly. I'll drop the ball and that ball will have been made of glass and we'll all get sliced up.

Wow. Okay. You know, I just wrote myself into a complete gasping crying trembling panic attack.

If I say no to you in the next few days, my pounding heart is why.

Put that on a cup-sleeve and drink it.

*With apologies to Eleanor Roosevelt who said it first, but didn't think to slap it on a $50 yoga bag or $4 cup of coffee. Sucker.

The first sign that I am a born librarian probably came during my OAC year, which would be the old Grade 13 to those of you who didn't know teenagers in Ontario in the 90s and early aughts.

My mom was a student at York U, and so every once in a while, I'd go to school with her and do research in the library while she was in class. The first time I did this, I tried searching something by subject, and the subjects didn't make any sense. And then I noticed the series of giant red books on the table by the computers, with LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SUBJECT HEADINGS emblazoned in gold on the spine.

I dug in. Took me a while to figure out even the basics, but I was hooked.

A couple years later I was in therapy for the first time, at York U. My therapist and I were trying to figure out some practical ways for me to escape some pretty damaging behaviours.

During one of our weekly sessions, Karen said "You need to find a way to stop taking on things that you can't do anything about. Other people's problems are not your problem. How can you get rid of them?"

"What, you mean like filing them away and forgetting about them?"

Indeed. We created the Not My Problem file, and I have found it invaluable since then. I don't have to use it so much anymore, because after a while things that are Not My Problem just naturally file themselves neatly away. But for a long time, it was a mental effort to catch myself in the middle of obsessing over something I couldn't control and mentally file it away.

Every now and again, I add another file. Fuck People is the most recent one. Not specific people. But Them, you know, the people of "But people will think bladdity blah blah, if yadda and yadda yadda and ya-." No. Filed under Fuck People.

Perhaps the full title of this folder could be "Fuck People : There Is No Such Thing As People."

I've developed other files before, and none of them has ever stuck around as long as Not My Problem. I'm not sure how Fuck People is going to work with what my brain is currently chewing on, or if it will at all. But the worst that can happen is that things unfile themselves until you can find the subject heading that will shush them.

Last week, as I mentioned, ended up being a very sad week. I have been back and forth on whether or not to blog about why, but in the end, I do not. Or not now. Maybe when it is not so fresh. Maybe never. It is hard to say if when it is not so fresh it seems like something worth announcing on the interweb.

This week is better.

And, thank fucking god, my therapist is back from vacation.

One tic I have, one steeped in a rich broth of fuckwittery, is that I have a hard time knowing what the truth is. It's probably a natural tendency I have anyway, just one of those people who can generally see both sides, all sides, of a story, and believe each one in turn has its own shred of truth. It can be an asset, I think, but it has been used against me with some vigor, with both external and internal force.

My therapist has no such tic. Though she does not tell me what to do, she does have an obvious and decided sense of what is right and what is wrong, what is just, and what is fair. From what I have gathered from her advice, I think that her views of these things line up with my own somewhat blurrier visions of these concepts. Talking with her makes me feel more solid and I come away from the appointments calmer and often quite happy. It's like she gives me a break from the parts of myself I find exhausting.

A couple of sessions ago, we finally got down to some brass tacks. I finished bawling, pulled my head up from between my knees, and said "For chrissakes. Daddy issues. So fucking boring." It made her laugh. I blew my nose and smiled wanly in return.

This week, we figured out that there's a bit of a hole where the loving myself is supposed to go, so I can be too dependent on other people's opinion of me, which makes me dislike myself more for needing it, and gets me wound up and fretty and worried and blah blah blah fucking blah.

If it weren't so funny that I've spent god knows how many hours and how much money to come up with "daddy issues" and "lack of self-regard," I'd be kind of disgusted with myself for being so damn ordinary. Instead I just snort, roll my eyes, and book the next appointment.

I almost cancelled the appointment I had with my Very Wise Therapist earlier this evening.

When I went to her a few weeks ago, she, of course, asked me why I had come back. I allowed as how there were two issues, one acute and one chronic. We spent most of the hour talking about the acute problem, which she felled by distilling into an easy aphorism that makes me feel better when I say it.* The crazy anxiety that had been buffeting my sternum was quelled calm almost immediately.

Last week, feeling calm and normal, I thought, hmm, maybe I should cancel and save my money. What am I going to talk about? But I didn't cancel, mostly because I don't have her email address. The phone is not my favourite mode of communication.

So there I was, in her very comfortable therapy room, its walls painted the same colour as my living room, my one leg stretched out on her couch that is almost the same colour as my couch, the other leg crooked back to the side.** At the beginning of the session, she brought in the clock and a box of kleenex. The second item surprised me at first: figuring, I suppose, that she should have picked up on my telepathic brain waves of calm. Then I thought, well, she probably can't read minds, not really. Maybe my allergies will act up.

Since I ended the session with several wet and ragged balled up kleenexes in various pants pockets, and feeling pretty wet ragged and balled up myself, she maybe probably can read minds. I haven't cried like that since the time of the whale.

It was the same sad from the same deep well, one I dug as a child; just touched in a different manner. Pointed, yes, but not quite so cutting.

*Yeah, uh, no. I'm not telling. Girl's got to have some boundaries.
**Thank you, bikram yoga.