Up Again

July 3, 2017 / christyterese / Leave a comment

It’s been difficult to write.

That’s not entirely true.

It’s been difficult to write something that doesn’t sound like suicidal ideation blended with complaint and condemnation and a little bit of protein powder to make an “I fucking hate everything and everyone and can’t remember why I keep trying at life smoothie”.

And I am relatively certain that nobody wants to read that. Or taste that. Or whatever.

On the bright side, I’m not literally suicidal. And all sorts of pop songs are cycling through my brain—not death metal—so, all is not lost. Though I did tell my dad yesterday that things were going to get very Dantesque around here if I don’t get a ruling in my case soon. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.

But for the moment, I am only a depressing mess in written word, not in other facets of my life.

Today I have been wondering about that a bit. And I am wondering if there is an element of true self and false self, or of seen and hidden, or of private and public, that is expressed through the writing and being. Is there a tie that binds my writing with my deepest feelings, and keeps it honest? Or is the best of me brought out in person, leaving the struggle for the page? Is there some way that my craft expresses only one bit of me and not another?

I don’t know how to answer that.

And now I am tired. Tired beyond all telling or explaining.

Just considering one or two questions exhausted me. And my splint just hit buttons without my consent and tried to send my document over the internet for translation? What the fuck, splint? Why are you acting out? I know why the dog and cat and offspring are cranky—not enough play time, no fresh litter liner, and no access to cigarettes or boyfriend, respectively.

And I am cranky because everything and everyone else needs and wants my attention and affection and compassion and concern. But I don’t even have enough of that for me. I can’t give what I don’t have. But I keep on trying. I’m a fucking bleeding turnip. I’m a fucking bleeding stone.

So, while the dog is fed and the cat is sleeping in the window and the temperature is below 80 degrees and the daughter is out, I’m going to stop trying to express my thoughts and start taking a nap.

Because the one thing I know for certain is that no matter how many times I fall, I’ve always gotten up again, and I think that is the truth for all of us in this household—whether I hold us up, or whether the others lift me up, or whether we all take turns dragging one another from the depths. And lying down this afternoon gives me an opportunity to wake in an hour or two, and get back up again. Rested a bit, I hope. Ready to fight—in the good and righteous way where we make it through life no matter what challenges are thrown our way. And the longer I have fought, the more I have learned that you stop the monsters by throwing back love and kindness and good. So, I need to regroup and give myself the attention, affection, compassion, and concern—the care and love and kindness—so I can keep putting it out into the world and overcoming the challenges. That’s right: We fight with care and love and kindness. It’s the only way to win. It’s the only way to get back up again.

Breakthrough

February 26, 2017 / christyterese / Leave a comment

Sometimes I write a whole lot of stuff and then I just file it away, never to be seen again.

Unless I die and someone figures out my laptop password, divulging all of the secrets within the “Current Writing Projects” folder, there are thousands upon thousands of words that will never be read by anyone. And that assumes that whoever cracks my password bothers to read my work.

I often feel like writing for an audience makes my writing rather shitty.

In my undergraduate studies, I got a less than fabulous grade in my advanced expository writing course, even though many in the class considered me a fabulous writer. But I didn’t follow the process that my professor so wanted me to adopt. My first draft was never handed in on time, and my final draft was usually my first draft with more words tacked on the end. His process, I believe, was not how I wrote well.

Now, that professor and his colleagues and his many protégés would likely argue that I can’t be writing well if I am still handing in rough drafts. But I made it through two master’s degrees without a second draft. And I still feel as though writing in ways that aren’t very stream-of-consciousness, throw-words-out-without-thinking, and blurt-whatever-comes-to-mind are ways that are less successful for me.

I may be wrong.

That happens surprisingly often, given those aforementioned multiple degrees.

But even if they are correct, and my writing would be improved by having a more traditional, tested process, I can’t seem to do it. Or, more accurately, I can’t seem to love it.

My whole life is sort of like this, I think. The more traditional and tested, the less enjoyment I experience. I’ve always been the headstrong, impulsive, unbound type. And the moment that people set expectations and made rules to hold me in, I suffered. Some would imagine that the impulsiveness and the chaos of anarchy were what hurt me. But I truly believe it was being caged that broke me, not being capricious or catapulting into life.

I know that some of this stems from the unhealthy personal history of which I sometimes share bits and pieces. Feeling captive—being captive—made me desperate for freedom. I needed to run. I needed to fly. I needed to be shot out past the orbit of Earth and end up in the sky, preferably somewhere amid Cassiopeia. I’m not sure why. The queen has simply been the place I wanted to be since we had a star-gazing event in the rural backyard of my grade 6 teacher. That constellation beckoned. The moment I could, I ran, I flew, I threw myself toward the heavens.

But there were always new sets of rules and people who tricked me into believing I wanted to be caged once more.

This weekend, I read a lovely bit of my daughter’s writing. She wrote about me. And she wrote about how I became tethered to the ground by my own body and mind—how I lost my confidence.

I spent all that time seeking to be free, and then my own body and mind caged me. I finally broke out of the orbits of family, partner, religious tradition, patriarchy, and expectations that were not meant for my good but for my compliance, and the thing that pulled me back down was my chronic illness.

I haven’t been myself in a really long time. Some days I don’t even know who that self is, or how to find her. The weight of fatigue and pain and mental anguish grounded me in ways that nothing and no one else could. And that devastates me.

And suddenly, all I want is to run, to fly, to be thrown to the heavens. But I don’t even know how to begin.

Caged. Subject. Tethered.

Some would say that as age sets in we become more “grounded”, and they mean that in this sense where you gain stability and live out your years with calculated and wise decisions. And when any of us stray from that trope, we are cast into another—the mid-life crisis sufferer.

I’m in that forty-something stage that may or may not be mid-life. I’m not average, so I cannot expect that my life span will hit the average either, frankly. And some people might think that my recent propensity for bright-colored hair or new tattoos or parties with my daughter and her friends or casually dating a string of inadequate suitors are symptoms of this mid-life crisis. But those people would be wrong.

My desire to find myself again, and gain my strength, and live unfettered and free, and restore my confidence, and be the kind of woman I love to be is leading me down the road I am travelling. And that is not a crisis.

That is a breakthrough.

That is me learning to own the parts of me that existed before and between cages. That is me learning that the Christy who fought to be free is the Christy that is naturally occurring. That is me learning to fly once more.

I may not be good at careful and calculated. I may not be good at decorum and expectation. But I am good. And I am best when I am set free—allowed to embrace my own way, and to chase my dreams without the weight of expectations, rules, secrets, tethers, and ties.

I think that this journey began with me crawling from a pit of despair, and I have a long way to go before I can spread my wings, but I am on that journey. My feet are on a path, and that path is leading to my best self—no matter what the critics say.

And I am starting to believe that I can one day make it back to the queen in the sky. Soon I will remember how to fly.

When The Pain is All That Is

December 8, 2015 / christyterese / Leave a comment

When I was younger I used to write late at night often. I was a single mother, trying to raise a child and finish college and figure out life all at once. The late nights and the early mornings were the times I could write without taking time away from my little girl. Early mornings were usually reserved for assignment completion, since my brain was fresh and unencumbered by the thoughts of the day to distract me. But at night, the emotions were what flowed onto the page.

I used to write with ink pen and notebook … I suppose most of us did. But for me it was an emotional expression that needed the feeling, the movement, the flow. And you could tell whether I was feeling nostalgic or angry or confused by the way the letters formed and the speed with which they formed and the strength with which I pressed the pen to paper. I wouldn’t have made it through those years without pouring thoughts on paper.

Now I rarely stay up past ten at night and can’t use a pen or pencil for more than a few minutes at a time, so that pouring out has largely disappeared.

But tonight is a different story.

Tonight I am letting it flow, in lots of ways.

The past few days have been an ongoing assault for me. Early December reminds me of death, and death reminds me of my mother’s death, and my mother’s death reminds me of all the other deaths, and so it goes with grief. The more loss you have experienced the more deeply each loss is felt, because they tie themselves to one another in some strange cosmic or cognitive way that none of us fully understands. But I don’t need to understand it to feel it—deeply.

So, I am in the middle of this grief spurt, of sorts, where feeling anything seems difficult and feeling something means feeling loss and pain. And of course, that is when I jump on the bandwagon of organizers everywhere and comment about the social problem that plagues my country now: gun control. (I actually could have chosen from any number of social problems. I wish that would have been a self-evident choice, but there are too many issues here to not name it specifically.)

And then the judges rule.

And by judges I mean people that are not at all qualified as judges or to make any particular judgments about the issue. Some of them put out a string of falsehoods. Some of them accuse me of “name-calling” because I use “stupid/classist/racist” as reasons one might think more guns would be better while simultaneously commenting on the number of shootings in Chicago. None of them do, or have ever to my knowledge, lived in Chicago, mind you. I do. In an area where gun violence is a constant. So, I am well aware and educated regarding what may or may not be helpful in ending this violence. And when I tried to fight back and stand up for my views, I was called a bully and treated like I am being a terrible person, or morally corrupt, or some other form of bad. Except those things arose after multiple people basically said a whole bunch of stuff about how wrong I am and how dumb my ideas are, and I responded with reasoned arguments and strings of facts. The idea that I am being mean, or bullying others by stating facts and reasoned arguments is ridiculous. The idea that a bunch of people ganging up on me to say how wrong and dumb and morally bankrupt I am, for expressing factual information about gun violence, seems a lot more like bullying than anything I have EVER done, in my entire existence.

I am, by the way, the opposite of a bully. I learned how to behave politely in the midst of great struggle and to pretend that my world wasn’t spinning out of control from a young age. I was the one who was bullied, repeatedly and viciously, by others. I was crying myself to sleep by age 9 and suicidal by the time I was 18. I’m not the oppressor, but the oppressed. I always have been.

I remember a time when my daughter was struggling with asserting herself, and in therapy this was something she was working on. One day, on the playground, she called a boy a name and told him to leave her alone. That boy had been bullying her for months on end, and she finally stood up to him, and she was sent to the principal and I was called to come get her because she refused to follow a teacher’s instruction to apologize. When I picked her up, I got angry with the principal, and said she most certainly would not be apologizing, and that we had been working all year to get her to voice her frustration and stand up to this bully. This was a moment of triumph, not a moment of failure, for a timid girl who always ended up under the sole of someone else’s boot.

She learned that by watching me.

There are things you don’t mean to teach your children. They are a part of you, so they become a part of them. I always bent to the will of others. I always hid the secrets. I always played the part. I tried and tried and tried to be the perfect daughter, and I failed. Because perfection isn’t actually a thing. Nobody is perfect, we say, but then we try to force people to be exactly that, and we strive for exactly that. It makes no sense. I taught my daughter to play the part too, and to not ruffle too many feathers and to not rock the boat, and I didn’t intend to, but she was subject to the same consequences I had been—being abused and manipulated and taken advantage of by others.

So, here is how I know I am not the bully. I can’t be that. I never learned how, and I am still trying to learn how. Every week in therapy we talk about how I deserve to be happy and I don’t need to care what others think and I don’t have to live up to any expectations and I get to choose whom I wish to be. Every week. I don’t know how to be a bully. But I am learning to voice my opinion and not back down and say things without sugar-coating every single word. And that is met with all sorts of opposition.

It occurs to me tonight, after enduring days of negative comments about me and my thoughts and my action and my words and my ideas and probably the size of my ass, when you get right down to all the comments I have heard in the past week or so, that maybe those other people—the ones making me out to be the bully–are actually the bullies themselves. Maybe they are so accustomed to people telling them what they want to hear, and to me being polite and diplomatic, that they lash out the moment that is taken from them. Or, perhaps the converse is true, and those people are the ones being abused by others, and my insistence on maintaining my views without any pandering or trying to be perfect opens up a view to their own insecurities. I’ll probably never know (especially because I unfriended most of them on Facebook, and I don’t think they have any other way to contact me).

It doesn’t really matter why they reacted in the way they did. It doesn’t even matter if how I was speaking made them think I might be a bully. Because the thing I can see, even in the midst of much pain and loss, is that I am not the kind of person they described, even at my worst. Anyone who knows me well knows this to be true. My good friends have watched me in the darkest and worst moments, and they know that I am love to the core, and that frustration only comes with pain, hunger, exhaustion, or injustice. It doesn’t live in my core, but it assaults me from without. I have the best of intentions, and the kindness of a saint, and love enough to pass it on to even the most desperate and marginalized among us. Hugging homeless prostitutes isn’t something that you do when you are a bully, or morally corrupt, or without character. That depth of love and understanding and that level of acceptance is a rare gift, and I am one of those blessed with that rare gift. And I don’t need someone else to tell me this. I know who I am.

Even though pain is all I feel and struggle is all I can seem to find these days, I know who I am. I am not what those people who haven’t seen me for the last 7 to 20 years believe me to be.

Even when the pain is all I feel, I am still looking inside for my value and my worth, not to the outside. I am finding the voice within and letting it out. I am the girl on the playground who is fighting back with her words against an onslaught of injustice and being called to the principal’s office for doing so. And that is fabulous and amazing and good. That is a triumph!

I know that few to none of my friends throughout the years struggle from C-PTSD, so I understand that they don’t get how important it is to find value in yourself and to let go of the expectations of another and to stand on your own, even if the other doesn’t appreciate you doing so. But it is extremely important. Earth-shatteringly important.

The PTSD mind is a mind divided, and often accompanied by a confusion or a lack of knowing the self. You can’t always—or maybe ever, in the beginning—trust what you feel to be yours and to be true. Those core beliefs that you have held for your whole life are false, and it takes so much work to root them out, recognize them, and respond in ways that help to break those down. To find your worth and to let go of shame and to release anger and to love yourself are nearly impossible.

I’m doing those things. In the face of all sorts of criticism, I am holding on to me, and letting myself feel what I feel and believe what I believe and stand up for both.

When the pain is all you feel, it is really hard to have breakthrough moments like this, or to find your footing at all. Today I am stomping with confidence, not just finding my footing. And if other people felt on the bottom of my boot sole, I suppose that saddens me a bit, but not enough to let up right now. Because I didn’t actually do any intentional harm to anyone, but others did do intentional harm to me.

Earlier this evening I posted that you cannot offer violence and expect peace in return. This is how I feel about my whole life, not just the past couple of days of comments. I was offered year upon year upon year of violence, and it is a wonder and a joy to know that I was not so damaged by that to deliberately harm others, or to deliberately harm myself, or to end my life, or to lose my mind completely. I was repeatedly offered violence, and ninety-nine of a hundred times, I respond with peace. That is a lot of peace, under the circumstances.

I am not a bully. Even when the pain is all that is.

So, I end the night and begin the morning having peace within once more. The assault of depression might linger for some time, or it might lift in a matter of days or weeks. Eventually I will find ways to feel joy again. I know, because I do it time and again. I always will. But, I rest in the knowledge that my strength is being found and held and kept against that which would seek to define me against my will. I am still me, even when me is a pile of grief and loss. And I will keep on being such, no matter who opposes me.

And it is a triumph.

Blank Space

September 13, 2015 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I spend a lot of my life looking at blank space these days. The empty bed where my dad slept the last few days when he visited. The gap left in my rear molar when the rest of it decided to suddenly crunch its way out of my face. The empty lot where a neighborhood house was recently demolished. A whole lot of other space that just seems to need filling.

But the space that frustrates me most is the blank whiteness of my screen/page when I write two or three paragraphs and then cannot write more.

I’m not sure why this space is so oppressing and so frustrating, but it is so. Perhaps it is because the page mimics my life. I’m not sure what comes next, and I look out into this blankness, unable to discern a clear path to the next line, or paragraph, or page, or chapter in my book (both literally and proverbially). I’m faced with the blank space where once there was a whole list of opportunities not to be missed.

When my dad was visiting last week he talked about how it didn’t make sense for people to wait for “someday” to do the things they dream of, and he keeps encouraging people to have their adventures and follow those dreams now. This idea wraps around him now, adding regret to his grief. I know that my parents kept putting away money for someday, and someday didn’t come. Sickness and death came instead. Returning to the Netherlands, vacationing in warm places, going to the grandkids’ music programs and graduations and possibly even weddings—all these are lost to my mother, and many of them don’t carry the same joy they once did for my father, since they dreamed such dreams together and now if he does adventure, he does so without her at his side. I trust he will adventure, but it will always be bittersweet.

As Dad was saying all of this about not waiting and seizing the moment, I realized that many of my saved-for-someday moments were already unreachable. They have already escaped my grasp.

Chronic illness and chronic pain steal so many moments.

I already know I may never be able to afford a house, a trip outside the U.S. (much less leaving the continent), or the travel and adventure I imagined in my youth. And I also look at the possibility of finding a partner and the possibility of fulfilling work with doubt and concern, where once I wore the rose-colored glass of a healthy woman—sure that all the good things would come in time and I would one day have my dreams come true.

Now I just look forward and see that blank white space. I don’t dare dream for things that will always be out of reach. I don’t know what I might be able to accomplish in this day, much less in the rest of my lifetime. And I don’t see the possibility as much as I see the pain. The pain is hard to deny. The loss is difficult to deny also, but the pain…it fills every moment. Blank space and pain.

In recent weeks I have tried very hard to find the positives in my life, and to seek out ways to add positives. I joined a gym with a pool. I worked on my writing course a bit. I deleted negative voices filled with doubt, judgment, and general toxicity from my sphere (aka, my Facebook page). I colored mandalas. I started a new art project. I rearranged some things in my home to create a small “sanctuary” space where I can meditate and do yoga or stretching with ease. I did all the good things.

And yesterday, after writing and swimming and leaving my house and getting some sun and having a massage and creating and doing all the good, I couldn’t move. Don’t misunderstand and think that I did all the good in one great motion, and that I overexerted myself into pain. That is not the case. Instead, I did all the things that are good for me, in moderation and over some length of time. I did all the things that should, according to the experts, be helpful and good. And I ended up in tears and debating a trip to the emergency department in the night.

And then, in a painkiller plus muscle relaxer plus anti-inflammatory plus alcohol state of acceptance (which allowed me to stop considering the emergency room), I realized that I was being foolish in the sense that I was seeking to win a fight with my illness. It isn’t uncommon for people to call themselves “warriors” or “fighters” in the sense that they fight their symptoms and their illness. I think it makes us feel better to believe that we can win. But my chronic illness can’t be beaten to death without beating me to death, I suppose. And that doesn’t seem like a good end to my story.

I think that my story should end with good and gratitude and love and joy and peace. That is what I want to fill that blank space. I don’t want to fill it with tales of fighting and losing and fighting and losing and fighting and losing and then dying. I want to fill it with laughter and hugs and a full heart and mind and spirit. And deep down, I know that means accepting pain and living with it, not fighting against it. The warrior mentality isn’t one that I can easily rid myself of….Wonder Woman covers my desk and my walls and my coffee mugs. And some of that warrior is still needed to accomplish life—to get out of bed and to stretch and to swim and to eat greens and to figure out a way to lower the cable bill while still accessing the next season of Game of Thrones on HBO, even when those things feel impossible. But, some of that warring needs to cease. Fighting to write more or write faster, fighting to open that roasted red pepper jar that my hand isn’t strong enough to twist loose, fighting to hold onto any “American Dream” that still assaults me every time I see a realty advertisement, fighting to find love instead of letting it alight upon my life with beauty and grace—these wars need to end.

The thing about that blank space that we all need to recognize and embrace, is that it is blank. It isn’t filled with our fears and doubts or our dreams and successes until we put them there. Too often I let other people write my narrative, or I accept the narrative I think “should” be mine according to the socialization and assimilation that surrounds me. What would happen if I embraced that white space on today’s page, and I accepted that whatever is written is mine to write? At the end of the day, I write my own narrative. My story is mine. And I don’t need to be the warrior who overcomes her pain to run that marathon she wanted to run 20 years ago. I can be the lover and the peacemaker and the best-selling author and the philosopher just as easily, and with just as much success and greatness. Fighting has sort of been glorified for us, in American society (and others), as though the story need be one of overcoming the obstacles and working against all odds in order to be good and inspiring, but I am beginning to see my story more as one of accepting that the mountain in front of us needn’t always be there to be climbed. It can be there to look at and enjoy, and then we can hop in the car and drive around that mountain. We don’t need to kill ourselves trying to do what society calls success. We can rename success. We can begin to accept or deny challenges, based on what we want to accomplish and love and seek to add to our story.

I won’t be running any marathon. I will hopefully continue to swim until 10 laps doesn’t hurt me anymore, but I won’t fight to get in all 10 every time I swim. I can accept 4 laps for today. And I can accept 4 laps forever and call that success if I recognize at some point that my body will never make 10. Goals can change. I don’t need to fight for something that hurts me. I can just change my expectations and accept my limitations. I may still buy a house someday. I may still marry a lovely person and share life with him or her. I might not. But that won’t mean that my story is one of failure, because I am beginning to recognize that I write the ending, and if I believe that love and joy are the end goal, then there are a million roads I can take and still be the heroine of my story. The blank space doesn’t need to frighten and frustrate and oppress, because it doesn’t need to be filled with fighting a losing battle.

I’m going to fill my space with wins. I’m going to fill my space with choosing acceptance. I’m going to fill my space with the knowledge that my disease affects me, but doesn’t own me. I’m going to fill my space with loving others. I’m going to fill my space with loving myself. I’m going to fill myself with reorganizing the way I think of success and failure. I’m going to fill my space with things I enjoy, whenever possible. I’m going to fill it with beauty and grace and love and peace as often as I can. I’m going to write my story as an adventure story with a happy ending, no matter that much of society would consider a woman who spends her days in pain and doesn’t overcome that pain a crappy story. It isn’t theirs to write. It is mine.

Don’t fear the blank space. Embrace it. Fill it and mold it and shape it and create it any way you choose. It is yours. And whatever your story may become, I know that I would love to hear it, and to share mine with you. (I guess this post already begins to share mine with you.) Let’s write our own narratives and share them with one another and with the world. Let’s create a space where, no matter the circumstances of your life, your story is validated and appreciated. Wouldn’t that be the most beautiful of endings? Wouldn’t that be the best possible use of blank space?

Undone

January 20, 2015 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I keep doing this thing where I write six paragraphs of text and then I get stuck. I just can’t seem to finish anything. It is an incredibly annoying challenge to be faced with. I rather hate it.

Procrastination

December 19, 2014 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I once saw a meme on Pinterest that said something about the idea that you should make your living doing what you choose to do when you procrastinate. That made some sense to me, because that must be the thing you would always rather be doing.

Of course, I can procrastinate in myriad ways. And I will even sometimes stoop so low as to do the dishes before finishing a task I hate, even though if you asked what I hate most the response will often be “doing the dishes”. And I know I don’t want to make my living washing dishes. Done that. So over that. Never want to do that again.

But, I still think there may be some truth hidden in that meme, because right now all I want to do is write.

My “To Do” list includes: the hated washing of dishes, cleaning perishable items out of the fridge, packing food items, packing dog toys, portioning out medications to be sure I bring enough, packing the toiletries, spraying my peppermint oil bug repellant so centipedes don’t take over my house while I am away, packing extra Wii remotes and all the cords and chargers and various items needed to make electronics invade every aspect of life, pack my computer, unplug items that won’t be used while I am away, make my daughter pack the rest of her clothes (I am certain she will forget her bathing suit…the one I have mentioned four times already), put the butter in the fridge to avoid returning to a rancid stick of yuck where the butter once stood, prep snacks for the road, and take out the trash.

All this needs to be done in about 14 hours, and I should also sleep for seven or eight of those hours, at least. And yet I am typing about what needs be done instead of doing it. And maybe that is partly because this is the thing I love. This is my bliss. And when you have a long list of things to accomplish overwhelming your spirit, maybe the thing you love can help to calm and free and care for you.

I suspect that writing cares for me. I suppose that is why I am drawn to it, and always have been.

When I was young, books were a beautiful escape. I made a secret hideaway in the back of my closet and I would sneak back there and pour all of my attentions and affections into story. I loved the library. I loved the search for something new and interesting. I loved the way it felt like finding treasure when something you happened upon while browsing the shelves turned out to be one of your best friends, the story that you could not live without and that you read over and over until the librarian told you to cool it and let someone else check that book out for a change.

As I grew older the words began to come from inside. Mostly in jagged and torn sorts of poems or song lyrics. There was a lot of dysfunction and anger in those poems. So, I also started a journal. I would write out all the madness that was swimming in my head, and pour my struggles and pains onto the paper. It felt like a release. It felt good to get it out. And then, one day, I remembered that I used to write stories, and that I have always loved stories. So, I started to write those too.

Then I wrote flourishy-languaged and well-researched papers for graduate school. Some of them were rather fabulous. I still wonder at my lack of energy toward publishing any of them. I think they would have made great journal articles…might even have changed the world…but I didn’t seem to care and they sit in boxes in my office wondering if they will ever be read, I suppose. While I was writing for grad school, I mostly stopped writing for myself. I still loved writing, but the writing was to prove a point and to pass a class, not to let the stories out.

So now we come to today. We come to the place where almost all of what I write is written to tell my stories. And they are only about eight percent meant for others. They are told for me. They still offer me that release. They still allow me to get it out. Writing brings me peace. It brings me joy. It makes my life richer and more meaningful. It is the thing that I should be doing.

So, do it I shall!

And maybe it can be the way I make my living, or maybe it can be the way I find purpose in my life. Maybe it can be both and more. But what I know it will do now is make me late for my scheduled departure tomorrow, so perhaps I should stop doing the writing just now and start to tackle that list of tasks lazily labelled “B4 trip”

Don’t worry. I’m certain to send you some stories from the road!

The Palmer Method

October 8, 2014 / 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.

Learning To Be Whole

Letting my traumas speak, so they might be silenced.

writing