Reading rosyxxx's journal

So much has changed for me sinced March. My life is changing dramatically. So many opportunities have opened up, so many gifts have come my way...and now it is up to me, not only to decide how to use those gifts, but to stay committed to what I have begun.

When people come up to me, literally yearning to be my friend; when my family seems to be coming around and understanding why I have been the way I am a little better; when friends that haven't been friends that long start standing up for me, and calling other people on their bullshit on my behalf...which just happened last week or so on the issue of the love of my life; and I find that the financial imabalance in my bill equations seems to work itself out; and my health is not only better than a few months ago; but vastly better than a few years ago; when I have the energy of a child, and my cynicism and jadedness are disappearing slowly; when I sleep well, with relatively few nightmares or panic attacks, unlike years ago; when I can listen to what other people are saying and pay attention; when my bosses and my co-workers and my friends actually enjoy my presence, and guys come out of the woodwork wanting to date me, and people invite me to all kinds of parties and get-togethers...most of all, when I wake up and feel alive and happy 95% of the time, as opposed to 5% of the time.........I know something drastic has changed in my life.

The reason that I feel like Cinderella, is that I know, without a doubt, what has caused these changes. I know. I should know. I began the practice for these very reasons. And now, there are so many times when I wish I could live at the pace that other's do, but I have my practice, both chanting and Yoga to keep up with. They come first, even if someone needs my help, those things must be done before the day is out. Or else.

Maybe not. But I don't wish to find out. I'm not interested in staying at the 'Ball' too long, and finding that my coachman has become a mouse, my car a pumpkin, and my dress has become nothing but rags. I don't wish to lose a glass slipper. No matter what anybody else says, this practice must be done every day, I feel 99% certain of it. There is but small room for doubt, and then I look back at the past year, and I know: I know that if I don't hurry home at the end of the night to finish my practice before I go to bed, if my practice isn't done on someone's living room floor, or in the dressing room at work, or wedged in the corner of someone's sofa, or in the car, or in the shower, then the magic of how my life has changed may stop, or not progress further...and I want to continue becoming a better person.

Someday, I may not have to be that committed to the changes, but right now, I do have to be. If someone tries to convince me that I don't need to do this, in my mind and my heart, I know they are inadvertently doing me a disservice, as well as a disservice to the one's I love. This practice has changed my life. Yes, I can still be a bitch (who can't?), yes, I can get way too angry at times, yes, I can forget about others needs for a moment, or even a day...but I can also now see where people have taken such blatant advantage of me in the past, that I had no ear for their ills, no energy left for them, and I took from them, because I had nothing left. I can also see where others are projecting their bullshit onto me, and accusing me of being the problem, because they remember how I used to be and want to pretend that I'm the only problem and they did nothing fucked up. They want to use my past behaviour as a rationalization for their bad behaviour, and what's worse, some of them know EXACTLY what they are doing. They know they've been draining me, while accusing me of being the one doing the draining. So I talk. Alot. But that does not excuse some of the behaviour I've come in contact with...you don't just suck someone dry because they needed a little too much at one time. That's selfish. It's hypocritical. I won't stand for it anymore.

This practice is making me stand my ground. I'm tired of being taken for granted. I want to be appreciated for the wonderful person that I am, and feel safe enough to appreciate others without them taking advantage of my kindness. They should be asking about what makes me tick, what I am doing with my life, while I'm busy asking about them; it shouldn't just be people telling me all about themselves, and then crying that I don't listen to them just because I talked about myself for more than a minute. Just because I used to take all of the time, doesn't make it okay for them to take all of the time...now. Two wrongs do not make a right. I expect that kind of respect. And I intend to have it. I also expect my loved ones around me to have respect for my practice. At least enough not to make fun, or light of it. If they don't believe in it, then that is their choice, but they best not be trying to dissuade me from it...because I will walk away. And not come back.

This practice has made me commit to eating primarily vegetarian and organic, drinking almost nothing but water, wheatgrass juice, and soy-based milkshakes that I find quite tasty. It's made me stop drinking. It's made me realize just how fucked up all the supposedly helpful medications for whatever 'supposed mental imbalance' were making me...and kept me committed to using the THC to keep things on an even keel, along with my chanting and Yoga. My hope is that soon, I will no longer need the benefits the THC gives, and can rely entirely on pranayama breathing exercises to ease my anxiety and help me to focus without having to take either prescibed pharmaceuticals, or drugs which are illegal inside the States except for California. My practice has also given me the capacity to have firmer convictions, without being nearly as abrasive about conveying them as I used to be...I can assert myself without turning into a raging maniac trying to defend my heart.

I have a wellspring of energy and love, that I can go to now...and I'll share it, but I won't give it away. I will share the bread, but not give away all of the 'sourdough starter'. And how I have learned to reach that point, feels like learning to ride a bicycle. I'm not ready yet to take the training wheels off...so any friends or lovers of mine, will have to understand that whatever else happens in the day........my practice must be done before I go to bed. I'm not willing to find out what happens if I quit. In fact, I know.

I began something like this practice back at the end of 1998, when trying to leave a bad relationship. I succeeded. Then I slacked on the practice, and I let the person back in my life, believing that they could help me, or save me. It took another year to leave, and then years of fluctuating levels of bitterness. So much work to get back here, because I gave up. The core of my daily life is my practice, and it has changed my life. People may not believe it can do that, but it has done so for me. I still have my bad days, and days where I lapse into old behaviour, but they are almost non-existent. I stumble, I sprain my ankle, I get up and keep dancing. Metaphorically, and literally speaking. I make more people smile at work than frown. My friends say I make them laugh, and smile. Even when I am bitching...they say that something has changed and even my miseries I convey in a funny light. I love this...why in the world would I want to trade it for a longer night on the town? Why in the world would I want to risk losing the magic of it all? To watch the coachman snivel at my feet for a piece of cheese with his mousy whiskers, or to have the light which seems to be coming out of me now dim itself? I wouldn't. This new reality brings love and light to myself and to those I love, even to some of those I don't really know. My neighbor told me that meeting me has changed her life. The suicidal impulses are gone, the depression has faded, and she is happier. And I know that it isn't just my presence that is doing it, it is the light coming out of me, as if I were a lightning bug and all of the chemicals in my butt were working synergistically now...for the benefit of more than myself.

Funny, my desktop computer screen is a photographic image of the colored light patterns that fireflies leave in the atmosphere after buzzing around in the dark. I always liked fireflies. Now I feel like one. I feel like a firefly at Cinderella's ball. A beautiful firefly with a heart that just keeps becoming more whole. If you run into me on a bad day, cut me some slack please... I am still learning to keep that light on as much as possible.

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?

Well, here I am replying to my own post, with another terribly long post <but what's new?>...but I think it necessary, if only to see the contrast. Within a week of writing this post, I finished yet another mantra practice for someone else. And anyone who has done this, knows that the chanting has an effect on the person doing the chanting as well as the one being chanted for...mind you, people had requested that I do these practices. The one I am doing for me will take seven years to complete at the rate I am going with that one. But...this one I just finished a few days ago.

A few days prior to the ending of it, everything seemed to blow up. I got sick, there's flack at work, the panic attacks are back, and so many problems are coming out about my family. This is, of course, all good in the long run...but for now, I dislike it intensely, because it has disturbed my equilibrium. Or maybe, when these things happened with practices before...I took the trials a little better. I'm taking them so well now...I am impatient. I read my I Ching the other day, and that's pretty much where it's going with that topic.

I have, yet again, it happens...lost my center in my practice. I've been thrown off balance. The groundedness of the practice isn't there. It's because I have been racing around trying to multitask my practice (as some people suggest can be done...), which in my temporarily not humble opinion (apparently) doesn't work quite so well. Especially not for someone who has historically had high anxiety. When I try to fall asleep now, I feel as if the nails are being driven right into the coffin. If I get up and move around, do some laundry, clean the bathroom, write online...the feeling fades.

I feel like the little girl I used to be, deathly afraid of getting up to go downstairs for food at grandma's house. So afraid of making the floorboards creak. I remember lying awake in whatever room I was allocated to, particularly the one beside the bathroom, and listening to the train whistling, and hoping that morning would come uneventfully, and we could go down to Henry's for ice cream, or over to the diner for breakfast and watch grandma drink her coffee.

I was like a little doll for her to dress up. But she scared me...and I know why. I actually remember looking forward to going to grandma's because I did love her...but I really resonated with Little Red Riding Hood. Of course, the irony here, is that one of my mom's favorite photographs of me as a little girl, is the one where I am wearing my short red coat. I'm dressed, and so is my sister, more like a child from the 50s. Looking more as if the children in those pictures could have been my mother's sisters. She did have one, but that sister died in the hospital of pneumonia, and my grandmother never even saw the baby. It wasn't done back then. My grandmother truly was a fun person to be around at times, but she had a lot of bad points.

One of them was having been beaten and raped repeatedly as a child in Denmark. She supposedly protected her younger twin, and took the brunt of it. Had a baby at 11, gave it up for adoption, and had an abortion at 13. Pretty soon after that, they came to this country to live with an eccentric uncle, in the very house I visited. She stayed there all of her life. That place just creaked with memories, my great-uncle's, my mother's, my grandmother's and grandfather's, and mine and my sister's and Dad's.

When we went to visit my grandfather's family in Denmark, they were an entirely different lot. Yes, his sister was a bit of a bear, but also very entertaining. I somehow get the feeling, from the stories I remember, that my grandmother liked daring and dashing men as much as I do. My grandfather was very outgoing, and loved speeding around in his little roadster. Speeding back then was going 40, which irked my grandmother. I know why I'm rambling about this stuff...it is eating me up inside. I wish these memories, coupled with the memories of numerous bathing sessions and visits to my room, and episodes of being pulled into grandma's bed would go away sometimes...but I wanted to work through them. So here they are...and then, the minute I wish them away, they fade, and I immediately want to know the rest of what happened. They taunt me, and remind me of what a customer at work said once...this place is a holding bin for lost souls. I thought that was a crock of shit.

To a certain extent, I still do. There are a number of people there, who just need the money, and are doing nothing but paying the bills, or working their way through college. I've seen my share of college graduates using that job to get through, including myself. I have my BFA. But that's it. Except I also have something in common with most of the entertainers that I work with...I was abused, constantly, by several people in different ways as a child.

I was so sure that I was different. You know my family hobnobbed with the Chattanooga elite, we went to nice parties, had fun vacations, I went to a nice girl's school, and was National Merit Commended and Phi Theta Kappa later. My teachers praised my work. Everyone said I had a wonderful future. I saw myself as better than the people I worked with when I started dancing. The job was just temporary. It appears that it is also where a lot of severely damaged people end up. And it can be a fun place to work, if the right people are managing....but for years it wasn't. And any reemergence of that kind of behaviour from management not only makes me cringe, it makes me fight back as those people were the one's who originally hurt me.

I have to stop myself because my urge is to hurt. Pretty much verbally. I've almost always turned the physical stuff inside. Either torn at my own skin, dug a hole in my nose with my fingers where no one could see (which some doctor thought was something else...but no, it was this disgusting thing that I did), punched myself in the head, punched myself in the stomach...obviously these things sound ludicrous...and they were. But it eased the pain, made the memories go away...But they'd always surface in my poetry. I'd wonder sometimes, what I had just written, and it would make no sense to me....now it does. It's much easier to read my poetry isn't it? Reading something like this poem: Flowerchild Blooming in the Snow that I posted here last year, is somehow so much easier to read than what I just wrote. Ditto, Dancing Girl, and My Bones Were Quenas. But I can't seem to find Blood and Wine; although it is in my chapbooks here...

I don't care if no one reads this, or if someone wants to complain about introspective writing on a site devoted to conversations. And I'm sorry it's so lengthy. That's just me...longwinded. It's my flaw. But my strength is I care about people. A lot. I don't want them to be hurt. Not even by me. I want children to grow up in a home where no one will hurt them. And where it isn't risking slander to name the perpetrators who might still be alive. Nor mentioning the family members who might still be being abused. It seems that when one comes from a poor family, those things generally out themselves more easily. In a middle class or well-to-do family, like the family of my grandmother's father, those things are covered up.

The other evening at my birthday dinner, my Dad was talking about an organization called Leadership Chattanooga, where he had been called to be a part of the team training the new leaders for Chattanooga. Something about a plane crash, and some of the prominent city planners being killed. So, people from all walks of life across the city were being trained for positions of leadership. One woman spoke up and said: "Who are we kidding? Those positions will be taken by the children of the city elite on Lookout or Signal Mountain." The moderator's response to her was this: "Lady, the children of the elite in this city are either on drugs or in jail."

And isn't that the truth. And I wonder why. But I really don't. I know. Dysfunction is rampant, but it's worse when people pretend it never happened, and that it isn't happening now. I have listened to people involved in counseling small children who are being abused, and they know who is doing it in the family...but because the family doesn't want the child to know, they are legally sworn not to give the child the answers to their questions. They must bite their tongues.

I've often thought, especially after graduating with my BFA in 1999, that I should continue on for a Master's in Art Therapy. It was the one single thing my professor's recommended most, with my background of two years in Physical Therapy and Science, and my background in art. They said I seemed to care so much about people and about art as well. That I cared concretely and abstractly...but it's this feeling...that the way I ache inside right now, I'd ache for every single child I saw who was being hurt...because predominantly, that's what I understand Art Therapy to be used for...so I'd be in a business that would rely partly on the continued abuse of children, and to a certain extent that is where I am now. By default.

Though, of course, there are plenty of healthy souls I work with, and customers who are just at peace and very open about their sexuality. There is a lot of wonderful openness in that environment, but the fact remains that hidden between the cracks are the abused and the abusers. Lurking in the private area, and interspersed throughout the club. They are there...I see them. Maybe only a few a night, but I see them, and I know what they do. I can feel it, like slime. And I hate them for it. And I want to spit at them, but I try not to think that way, and focus on the many people there who do just want to have good, clean, but naked fun. And yet, in the back of my mind it is irking me...why don't you do something? Why?

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?