risk

Accidentally

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

My dad left only about two hours ago, and already I have realized that I accidentally left my handicapped parking placard in his vehicle.  I suppose this is one accident less than the two from his visit just weeks before, when he accidentally took my spare keys and accidentally left his air mattress and pump.  Regardless, it seems there is always something left or taken without us having meant for it to be so.

 

While he was here I accidentally got him a parking ticket.  I meant to move the car from one street to another, since one is free at night and another is permitted parking only at night.  I was late in my duty and saw the ticket writer moving along the street as I went out to move the car. Too late. The ticket was already written and he wouldn’t take it back and offer a warning instead.

 

A few hours later we were off to lunch in the backseat of the vehicle of my friend and his husband.  It was snowing out, and we were all pleased that the “snow” function on the new Range Rover worked exceptionally and kept us from sliding into the intersection where the road was slick from precipitation.  Unfortunately, the vehicle behind us was not a Range Rover with a snow function to choose, and we were struck from behind. Nobody was hurt, thankfully. (Though I have had a headache since and am inclined to claim that being jostled has thrown my vertebrae off center–but know that my physical therapist can just push those babies back into place next session and likely fix the problem, so I’m not ready to file an injury suit just yet.)  But it took some time to exchange information, and our friends needed to go to the police station after lunch and file reports for the collision, and will need to take the car in for repair.

 

Accidents happen often.  

 

And not just the collision kind, but the kind where you aren’t paying attention to your things or your words or your actions with enough focus to make certain that you aren’t saying or doing something that is potentially harmful.

 

My dad and I also discussed, at length, the type of accident where people’s words are accidentally stupid or hurtful.  Because people don’t seem to pay close enough attention to their surroundings to understand that they are leaving something out.  And generally the thing left out is compassion for a person’s situation–empathy.

 

There are so many statements that have come across our paths that are unintentionally hurtful.  

 

I understand how you feel.  You must be lonely. When are you going to find a new partner?  You should [insert obvious medical advice we have already tried].  Your partner/parent/child is in a better place. You’re young, so you you’ll find someone new.  

 

All of these things are meant to be kind, but they accidentally cause even more wounds.  They aren’t helpful. And what would be helpful is simply to not try to identify or give advice, but to say that you don’t understand, but that you are ready and able to listen, to perform household tasks, and to help in practical ways that give a person time to rest, heal, and grieve in the ways they need to do so.  

 

As a chronically ill individual, I have a whole set of ways that people accidentally offend, atop the normal process of grief and singleness.  I have people who tell me to get well soon–which I won’t. I have the constant onslaught of home remedies and stories of “my [loosely connected acquaintance or distant relative] who did thing X and was healed of their illness, which are unsolicited and annoying, because I have a team of 13 specialists who oversee my care and some raw honey is not going to be the thing that all of them missed as a magic cure.  The other night my cousin said, “If they keep looking around the doctors are going to find things wrong.” Later my dad laughed at me as I recounted that statement and how badly I wanted to reply that medicine doesn’t work that way, and I am not a used car. Things must actually be wrong for them to diagnose me with an illness. They don’t make up illnesses so they can bill you for a new pancreas! It was another accidentally, really weirdly, delivered comment that made me feel like my situation isn’t one that others take seriously or treat with validity and respect.  

 

I am not saying at all that my cousin, or others, don’t take me seriously or treat me as valid and respected.  Quite the contrary! But somehow, when it comes to these statements, their care for me and their understanding of and care for my situation don’t align.  They accidentally get it wrong.

 

So, how do we change that?

 

I wish I had a clearer answer.  Because I can shout empathy, listening, and validation from the rooftops all day long, and people will say, “I’m a great listener and your feelings are totally valid.”  But the disconnect remains. I think there is a big difference between hearing what a person says and feeling what a person says.

 

My dad is of the mind that until you go through grief of this depth, you can’t understand and will continue to view things in a way that is incomplete–and, therefore, will continue to say the wrong things.  

 

I’m not of that mind.  I’m not of that mind because I know people who suffer physical pain and still don’t have empathy for my physical pain.  And I’m not of that mind because I have a few friends who are deeply aware of what I am feeling, even when I am doing what I believe is a good job at hiding my true feelings–they see through my act.  I’m not of that mind because people who have suffered similar experiences to mine can shut down in ways that I cannot, and can ignore the past in ways that I cannot, leaving no room for empathy, even though they know exactly how it feels to experience that pain.  

 

Instead, I think that we all have the capacity for empathy, but very few of us have the strength of will and the courage to open ourselves in that manner.  Because doing so means deliberately seeking to feel the pain of others. It means to share in their sorrows–not just on some surface level where you offer the accidentally insensitive platitudes, but truly feeling that sorrow.  And why in the world would we want to add sorrow to our lives??!!

 

But the thing that is important about sharing in sorrows is that you also get to share in joys.  When you share in the sorrows in deep and meaningful ways, you also share in joys in deep and meaningful ways.  So, letting in the suffering means letting in the celebration. Letting in some darkness means flooding the space with light!  Who would want to miss out on that??!!

 

The people who see me in my darkest moments also are invited to share in my brightest and most glorious moments.  And those are really fabulous! I pour so much love into the people who love me truly that it is almost ridiculous.  I’ve probably loved some people so well that it has frightened them away, because they were not accustomed to such unfettered, unconditional love and it felt awkward or foreign.  But those people also dealt with me in the depths of my despair, which was extremely difficult, I know. And the reward isn’t likely to be equal to the expense, but that is just the way that life works out, I think.  

 

The risk in life is often greater than the reward.  But that does not mean that it isn’t worth it. That doesn’t mean the experiences and the people and the adventures are not worth it.  Because the idea that we shouldn’t move forward unless the reward is greater than the risk is one that was manufactured by the modern man, not one that has always been a part of humanity.  It is an accident of our economy that we weigh the risks and decide that the safe bet is to not open up. We keep closed our bank accounts, our doors, and our hearts because the risk seems to outweigh the reward.  But in doing so, we have made a grave error. Because life happens in the accidents, more often than not. We cannot plan for every outcome. We cannot keep “safe” by keeping distant. And keeping ourselves closed off from everything and everyone just makes us more susceptible to being left alone in our tragedies, should they arrive accidentally.  

 

We need to open up and find that empathy and feel for others and with others.  We need to share sorrows and joys. We need to stop weighing what we think will be the consequences and throw the risk/benefit analysis out the fucking window.  Life isn’t a series of rewards assessments. Life is often a challenge. But it is often an adventure!

 

So go out there and make your accidents be ones that aren’t based on selfish, closed-hearted living that causes offense to those who are suffering.  Make your accidents be the kind that are derived from throwing caution to the wind and running headlong into feelings and actions that let you know the deep lows and the exhilarating highs that life has to offer us as human beings.  Because that is amazing and wonderful, and, I believe, what we were designed to experience.

 

Use that empathy.  Feel deeply. And experience a full life.

When Comes the Night

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

“There are low points. There are going to be low points. And if you can take me at the high points, then you also need to take me at the low points. That’s what I have to say.”

My daughter uttered these words with passion and much arm movement a few moments ago. She was preparing to go seek out a job. An acquaintance told me to have her come in and talk with him about a possible position at the business he manages, so she was on her way there to see what that talk would bring about. We both have high hopes that it brings about a job!

She has been looking for a while now. And the longer you look, the harder looking becomes. Many of us have been in that position. The more rejection you suffer, the more difficult any risk of future rejection is to attempt. You start to feel tainted or insufficient in some manner. It’s not a good feeling. And she has been feeling it.

Today she was expressing what I have been feeling as well.

I’ve been struggling with my mental health. I’ve had suicidal ideation—not active plans for death by suicide, but the hopelessness and the feeling that there isn’t a reason to keep living—for a few weeks now. I’m working hard to use my psychological “tool box” of coping strategies to keep myself from slipping farther into deep depression and to find some hope. But it is a huge challenge.

And life keeps moving on, even though I am feeling this way.

Bills keep coming in. Appointments keep popping up on my calendar. Responsibility still beckons me to take care of things and be an “adult”.

I’m at a really low point.

I think that the last time I was this low was more than three years ago. And the time before that, maybe another four. And then two years before that. And eight before that.

I can keep walking it back to age 19. And I know that there were extreme low points before that, but 19 is the age where I start remembering those low points with some detail.

Age 19. Phillip. Night work at the bakery. Drinking—so much drinking. Jealousy. Sadness. Remembering, and nightmares, and not knowing how to understand or cope with any of that. Dropping out. Being called a liar. Weird interactions with men. Being called a slut. More drinking. Breaking up. Wanting to be dead. Learning to use wanting to be dead as a manipulative tool. (Something I would later need to work hard to unlearn—and that tempts me even today, because people finally seem to give a shit when you say the word “suicide”.) Crying. Lots and lots of crying. William. Feeling sick. Not the flu kind of sick, but that empty hole in the center of your being feeling of sick. More drinking. More crying. Running away to find some sort of escape, but framing it in a “new beginning” or “starting over” or “opportunity”, only to run to the next place and the next thing a year later.

It isn’t always as bad now as it was that first time that I remember in detail. Mostly because I now have that psychological “tool box” to draw upon for coping strategies, and I have medication, and a concrete diagnosis, and a weekly therapy session. But it is still bad.

If you take me at my high points, you have to take me at my low points.

But people don’t, do they?

Time after time I am left alone when the low point hits. Time after time the bottom falls out of the relationship when I hit a deep depression. Time after time I am alone when the bank balance hits the red “danger days” of overdraft. Time after time I am raising that child alone—okay just one child, one time, but it feels like a thousand times because you keep doing it every day, and keep doing it long beyond childhood, because the words uttered today were uttered by a 20-year-old daughter, who is an adult, fiercely independent and desperate to prove she can make life better than life was when it came to her.

When my daughter was young, we had a rule for birthday invites. She was only allowed to invite to her celebrations those people whom she believed would also show up to her moments of greatest sorrow. That rule always led to a house filled with random people from all the corners of our lives. Family, my friends, her friends, people from church, people from school, people I worked with, people in our neighborhood. A diverse group who were not connected to one another except through their bond with us came together each year, and met and talked and learned about one another’s lives. It was always a great joy. Later, when she was a pre-teen, we abandoned that rule. Every birthday since has been a source of disappointment or challenge—people didn’t show up, or fought amongst themselves, or broke things in her room, or any number of weird things. The moment we stopped allowing only those who would mourn with us to celebrate with us was the moment that the parties started being stressors and not joys.

As I think about my life now, and I think about the joys and the sorrows, I look back to those parties. I remember that rule, and I wonder why I didn’t work harder to apply it to my own life and relationships.

I am a person who loves deeply, and without many prejudices. (We all have some prejudices, and being honest and forthcoming about those biases is the best way to combat and cope with them.) I offer love to all sorts of people whom others might fear or look upon with shame or judgments. And I think at times that openness has been a place where my armor is weak. Love flows out, and blades of dishonesty, violence, manipulation, or some other bad thing can be forced into that space with greater ease. Being open-hearted means being vulnerable, in some ways. And when I stopped considering who would be there in the low points, but let people join me in the high points, regardless of where they were when I was struggling, I left myself vulnerable in unhealthy ways.

Where were those people in the low points? I don’t really know. They had an excuse for not being with me, of course. But those excuses started to pile up to the point where I felt used instead of loved. And maybe I was. I probably was.

Because for some reason I give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume that they love in the ways that I love. I assume that they stay through joys and sorrows. I assume that they offer love without conditions and avoid judgment and shame. But they don’t.

I love that way. They don’t. (Or at least most of them don’t, or none of them have thus far in regard to my romantic relationships.)

I have people in my life who do love that way. When my mom died two years ago, there were people who came to the wake and the funeral who were there just to see me and support me. I hadn’t lived in that town for several years, but there were a few people who loved me deeply and truly—in joys and in sorrows—who knew that I needed them to be there in that low point. They wanted to be there with me in that low point. I cannot express how much that meant.

Lately, I feel just as my daughter has been feeling—like she was emphatically stating today. If you take me at the high point you need to take me at the low point. And the reason that statement came from her lips is because there are people in her life who are not there at the low points. There are too many people who want the joys but not the sorrows. I feel overwhelmed with the number of people who are not there in my sorrows.

And I should probably look on the bright side. I should probably see the people who are present and loving me through this very low point. But that isn’t what my mind and my heart focus on easily or naturally. What they focus on is the lack of support. What they see is the lone wolf, fighting her battle without a pack to cover over the weakness or the fatigue or the blind spots in her vision—leaving her vulnerable to attack and making it nearly impossible for her to win the fight and survive the day.

Or, rather, survive the night. Because day isn’t what I am struggling with. I am struggling with the darkness. The depths. The most difficult. And that is the space that so few will enter alongside me. That is the place that people don’t wish to go—the arena in which they cannot support me.

I always find it intriguing (and sometimes find it infuriating) that when I post on social media about my financial need or updates about my disability hearing, people do not respond in any way, but when I post a picture of my freshly cut or colored hair a hundred people will “like” the post. Pretty, clean, happy-looking Christy garners support. Poor, struggling, sick-looking Christy gets far less attention. But the poor and struggling and disabled me is the me that needs the most support, not the me on happy days with well-styled hair. People love my joys, and disappear during my sorrows.

When the night comes, people run and hide behind their doors in “safety”. When the night comes, people distance themselves. When the night comes, people offer platitudes in public and judgmental gossip in private. When the night comes, the needy are left alone on the dark street, fending for themselves. And “joy comes in the morning” for those who wake to step out the door (and didn’t have to face the night) with far more ease than it comes for those who were battling through the darkness while you slept in peace. Yes, we have joy that we survived the night. But it is always tempered with the knowledge that we will likely have to endure the fight again when night falls.

My daughter texted that she got a job! Our joy is inexpressible! But it took months of sorrows to get to this day. And those don’t leave us just because of this joy. They linger. We remember the night. We know that we are inches from it at all times. And we know that many who will celebrate this joy were not there to offer love and support during the sorrow that preceded today’s good news.

It begs the question: Where are you when night falls?

Are you inviting the stranger into your home to find safety behind your walls? Are you in the streets protecting the others, who have no supports in this fight? Are you cowering in corners? Are you behind your own door, somehow believing that you deserve the security you have from the darkness because you are better or stronger or worked harder or behaved with greater morality than whomever might be fighting through the dark night of the soul?

No matter what I, myself, am fighting, I always fight for others.

That seems a bit ridiculous at times. I should put myself first, right? I have problems that need solutions. I need money, so I shouldn’t give my change to someone selling Streetwise on the corner. I am sick so I shouldn’t be hugging and holding the hand of the “dirty” homeless and addicts. I can’t take care of myself, so I shouldn’t take in others that need care. Right?

Wrong. I don’t know why I know with such certainty that it is wrong, but I know it. No matter how difficult my own situation, I cannot and will not lose my empathy and compassion for others. I will always help. I will always seek to ease pain for those around me. I will always try to save lives, bring comfort, offer security, and radiate love. Always. Even in the middle of my own dark nights. Even in my own very low points.

If you take me at the high points, you take me at the low points.

Don’t pretend you care and then not offer care. Don’t tell me you support me and then not give me support. Don’t say you love me and then not show love.

If you wouldn’t stand with me during my deepest, darkest, and most devastating sorrows, then do not stand beside me in my joys. You haven’t earned the right to my joys. You don’t deserve my best if you cannot accept my worst. And my worst is bad. It is really, really bad.

I still have suicidal ideation and hopelessness at the forefront of my mind. I still have significant need that isn’t being met. I still have all sorts of stressors and difficult decisions and challenges along my path, and I do not know how to address them or overcome them or cope with them. I’m still in the midst of the low point.

But I also have the opportunity to rejoice with my daughter over her news of employment at a place she is so excited to work. I still have the joy of celebrating the birthday of a dear friend this weekend. I still have the joy of discovering the offending medication that was making it impossible for me to do effective strength training, and to eliminate that medicine, so I could finally get a decent workout in this week. I have so many joys! They simply live in tandem with deep sorrows.

What is the point of this post?

I’m not entirely sure.

Maybe it is meant to whine about the ways that humanity is failing me. Maybe it is to set a boundary for myself, in writing. Maybe it is to offer a lesson to one of those reading, and to help them see that they are being “fair weather friends” and not true friends at all. Maybe it is just something that I needed to get off of my mind and onto some “paper”, so that I could stop playing it over in my mind, and get on with other tasks.

But I suspect that much of it is to give voice to what I have felt for a very long time—that nobody dares to know, to tolerate, or to manage the depths of my pain. They don’t know how. Or maybe they have never felt that low before and it feels terrible, so they stop. They leave me there in that pain, because it is so intolerable. And it is intolerable pain. Which is why there have been so many low points.

But if nobody ever finds the strength and the will and the compassion to join me there, I might never overcome. I might be stuck with that pain forever, or it might overwhelm me.

It is low. It is so low. And I know it is hard, because I feel it every single moment. It radiates through my body, and it poisons my life, and it hurts everything and everyone around me. That’s how low it is. But if I am ever to have joys to share with you, you need to find a way to join me in that sorrow.

If you are going to take me at my high point, you need to take me at my low point.

That’s what I have to say.

 

Naked As We Came

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

 

I’m listening to Iron and Wine. It is a little depressing.

It isn’t depressing because of the death aspect. The spreading of ashes around the yard doesn’t frighten me a bit. In fact, I am uncommonly comfortable with the concept of death. Maybe that is in part due to the losses that I have endured already, and the many people that I have “laid to rest”. Maybe that is also due, in part, to the times that I have had to face my own mortality.

It isn’t something everyone faces. Many people don’t sign the pre-operative forms that express that you may not come out of this procedure but are consenting, nonetheless. Many people don’t hear the diagnoses that make you wonder if you will still be around next week or next year or next decade. Many people don’t get the calm, and totally bullshit, speech about how “you needn’t worry because it might be nothing, but we need to make certain”. (If they really believed it was nothing, they wouldn’t need to make certain of anything, obviously. They do think it is something. They don’t refer you to specialists for normalcy.)

So, I’ve stood by as they lowered friends and family into the ground, and I’ve known the threat of death enough times to know that I don’t want to be put in the ground, but scattered to the wind. But the thing that makes me a bit depressed about the Naked As We Came song, is that I haven’t really imagined scattering someone around the yard, or them scattering me. My visions of death are rather sterile, and not at all attached to the presence of persons loved or who love me. I always seem to imagine my end in ways that connect with bright lights and cold metal tables, and not with the loving gestures of saying goodbyes and sending on those whom we have known with grace and beauty—casting them into the universe in their new ashen form, and in doing so, letting them go.

I remember after my friend Charles died, I spent a lot of time around his place and his family. There was something comforting about being near them, and they were just a bunch of good guys, in general. One day Pops, Charles’ dad, blurted out, “Catch!” He tossed me a little box wrapped in brown paper and I caught it.
“That’s him,” he said, almost too matter-of-factly.

But it was very matter of fact. It was a fact that this little box of ash held all the matter that was Charles. Charles + fire = this little six pound box. Holding him in my hands was not really all that significant. It had been significant to hold him before, but now all passion and connection and feeling was lost.

I’m not cold and crass in the ways that that statement might seem to express. I said my goodbyes as he lay dying in the street…crying out to the sky with a voice so pained that it hardly seemed my own. Sometimes you feel pain in ways that make your own pain foreign to you. I have that experience a lot, actually. Probably because my childhood made me an expert at dissociation. I can stuff my pain into hidden places and not find it for ten or fifteen years.

But I digress…

So death is not the struggle—not the thing to fear or fight against. But the not having someone who scatters those ashes is a fear. Or maybe not a fear, per se, but more of an unfulfilled longing.

My dad recently chose to impose a DNR and remove medication from my mother. She is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s and has spent most of this year in a nursing facility. My dad cared for her for the past several years, but she is unable to communicate, and doesn’t always cooperate, so it became impossible for him to keep caring for her at home.

I watch him now (or listen to him, I suppose, since I haven’t seen him in a year) and I see the ways he mourns this loss, slowly and deliberately moving through a grief and a death that doesn’t seem to have an end. Alzheimer’s is brutal that way—it takes so long to bring about the end.

I see him care for her in ways that I couldn’t have imagined ten years ago. It wasn’t that they didn’t love one another. I think they always have on some level. There were worse times and better times in their relationship, for certain, but that is what you sign on for when you vow “for better or for worse”, right? But these last few years, watching him become her caretaker and watching her slip from adult to teenager to toddler in her mindset and capabilities, I have seen something beautiful. I have seen a kind of love that my parents never allowed one another in their younger, more prideful, more strategic periods of living. Because when it all falls apart the need for one another becomes so great that all the other things sort of disintegrate. The need to be right, or to dominate, or have things be fair, or to maintain your autonomy, or any number of things that we insist upon in our relationship, all faded away for them and they became wholly devoted to one another. And some of that devotion was borne out of the reversal of their roles and an ability to show a side of themselves that was previously held in check or deterred in some way. My mom was always a control freak, until she lost control of her own mind. And my dad was always dependent by default because of that. And this period in their lives has flipped that relatedness on its head. My dad is the one in control and my mom is dependent upon him for all things. It allowed parts of them to be brought to life and strengthened their relationship, even while it slowly brings an end to their relating to one another.

And, while I don’t wish a slow, debilitating death upon anyone, least of all myself, I find myself envious of their experience in some ways. The romanticism of giving up everything for the one you love. The commitment to keep fighting and keep loving someone else through the thick and thin of life and relationship. The beauty of a history that can be passed on and can create legacy where once there were just a couple of lives. These things are the things that my life still hasn’t held.

And it isn’t that I am desperate for those things now. I’m not. I’m rather resistant to the idea of being tied to someone or not having autonomy or dealing with the complicatedness of joining lives. But there is something about having those things in my old age, in the spreading of my ashes around the yard, that seems very desirable, and the knowledge that I do not have that is what seems depressing, at present.

Of course, my beautiful daughter would scatter me to the wind with love and blessings and grace. I won’t just get dumped in the trash, thankfully. I’m sure that all the goodbyes spoken and felt will be beautiful and loving and good. But, that care and love and building of a home together are still such lovely ideals.

And here we have it again. The life of contradiction. The dichotomous being that I am.

I want to be alone, but I want to build a life with another. And you can’t really do both, I don’t think. I love the “both/and” option, but I don’t know that it is always a possibility. I can’t really avoid relationship and also have an ash scatterer in my life. And that is also depressing. Because it means I need to choose. And choosing means summoning a bravery that I’m not sure I currently have at my disposal. Because both options require what I haven’t yet got. One requires the opening of the self to the risk of being hurt and damaged in new ways. One requires giving up the ideals and the futures that Naked As We Came offers, and letting go of the ash scattering love. Both seem too difficult to accomplish today.

They are too difficult to accomplish today.

And they were actually too difficult for any partners in history to accomplish in a day. I suppose that is a comfort. It took 45 years for my parents to find the place where this transformation happened and I could see their love in this new light, so it might take some time for anyone to develop this idyllic relationship.

Your ash scatterer doesn’t just magically appear, I suppose. They are forged over time.

That seems a bit less depressing. That offers a bit more hope.

Maybe I can still build a home…after I am ready to risk. Certainly not today. But maybe someday. Maybe soon.

Hopefully, before I become ash.

The Palmer Method

/ christyterese / Leave a comment

I’m learning to write.  I’m pretty sure that I spent years of grade school learning to write.  Apparently, those years didn’t accomplish the goal, or my teachers didn’t teach me well.  After an injury to my wrist on a Chicago city bus (as an aside, avoid public transit on holidays when copious amounts of alcohol will be consumed by the general public … it never ends well), I’ve spent nearly three months in a splint, and have only recently been freed from that strange sort of prison.  But now I find that this injury will be chronic and recurring if I don’t learn to do things “properly” and avoid re-injuring my wrist.  So, writing.  I’m doing it wrong.  And I’ve been doing it wrong for what may be the span of 35 years or so.  That whole old dogs/new tricks cliché has new significance for me today.

So, Beverly, my fabulous occupational therapist tried to teach me how to write yesterday, and I am to practice daily with the Palmer Method of writing.  Basically, you don’t activate the wrist or the hand.  The movement comes from the shoulder, and the hand is basically just coming along for the ride.  It is more akin to conducting an orchestra in movement.  Oddly, I’m capable of conducting an orchestra, and a complete failure at writing using this method.

The most interesting thing about this experience, for me, is the realization that I cannot relinquish control.  My hand grips with such desperation that I am concerned for its mental health.  And then I realize that my mental health is probably a factor, and not really just the actions of my hand.  It is strange to me that I need this level of control–that I hold this much tension within my wrist and hand–but that I didn’t notice it until trying to make a line of useless loops across a legal pad at an outpatient appointment. I can’t let it go.  I can’t risk it.  Even an uncontrolled and crazy-looking letter “B” that slips above the paper’s lines is too much of a risk for my body to allow.  That is a frightening and frustrating truth to be faced with, because if I can risk nothing, I will likely gain nothing.  And I’m not sure that learning to write in a fashion that lets my hand be free will be enough to break through this mental and emotional barrier.

I understand where this self-protective and hyper-controlling instinct comes from, of course.  It isn’t so much of a shock, in that regard.  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and attention deficit disorder and addictive tendencies and borderline personality disorder over the years along the road to my true and best diagnosis of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Control is not just a habit, it is a leftover instinct from all the times that my experiences were so far outside of my control that I had to dissociate and quarantine my thoughts and feelings to some yet unearthed portion of my brain. I still haven’t found years worth of memories…and in some ways I am afraid to excavate those memories anyway.  I fear that even worse things might pop out of the dark and frighten the ever-loving fuck out of me. How would I handle that?  I can’t even handle my pen properly.

What is most interesting about this experience, for me, is that the hypervigilance that I deal with everyday is more deeply ingrained within my self than I may have realized.  And, while it is a frustration to think about fighting against my instincts and learning how to write with less control, it is a good thing to have learned that I have this deep sense of protection and control.  Knowing that it is held so deeply within my body–that my nerves and muscles hold this control so tightly that my own will cannot release them–lets me “off the hook” in some manner.  It lets me stop beating myself up a little. It allows me to forgive myself for the times when I startle at something that wouldn’t startle most, or the times when I need to remind myself to breathe more like a human and less like a horse in the middle of a stressful situation, or the times that I fight back tears that have come out of nowhere for no reason and lose that fight in the middle of an interview or on a city bus, where weeping openly is regarded as insane. Knowing how deeply affecting this disorder is gives me more grace to extend toward myself. (Or it should, at least.)

I received terrible grades in Penmanship during my early years of elementary school.  I couldn’t keep inside the lines.  It is sort of funny that I now can’t let myself go outside of them.  It makes me wonder, when did the tightness and control and self-protection become a paramount concern? Was it grade 2 or grade 3, perhaps?  Or did it begin with the disappointment of those low grades in Penmanship?  Maybe all the risk and freedom and creativity started being educated out of me in Kindergarten, when they told me to keep it between the lines and control it.  Maybe I learned very early that what people wanted from me was control.  My experience or my feelings or my desire or my freedom were not as important as keeping those letters’ tops below those lines.  Control was the greatest virtue, so I did everything in my power to pretend at having control.  And now I can’t seem to let go, in even the smallest of ways.  I need to learn freedom and risk and creativity once more.  I’m not sure how that learning might happen, but maybe the Palmer Method of writing will be one of those tiniest starts that leads to great change.  I certainly hope that is the case.