Things that people don't believe me about.

Ok here's a big one.  I don't believe in change.

Which is both a true thing and a big honking lie. 

I don't believe in waking up and going "today I shall be X", when X is something that is the exact opposite, or a good many degrees off, of what I am now.  I spent a long time wishing to be a different person and not achieving it because I could not see the steps, but nothing - from choosing a college to quitting smoking - ever happened cause I woke up one morning resolved to change.  Resolutions of any kind make me want to go be in the next room away from all that desperate energy.

Because my experience with sudden 360 degree cutbacks is that they come from a desperate place.  You hate yourself or some aspect of your job or your life or the color of your kitchen and so you just go the other way.  This does actually work in the kitchen sometimes, but when it comes to becoming, well.  Maybe this is only true for me, but no sudden moves ok?  I get carsick.  And then I stop. 

It's like saying "I'm going to make my mind up to be happy" which is a thing that drives me mad.  That does not work for me and anyway I think aiming at happy is a surefire way to miss.*  

What I believe in is gradual change.  Incrementalism.  Evolution.  The slow working of water on stone that carves, sometimes unexpectedly, into your being.  This is probably because I love therapy, though it may be I love therapy because this is how I am made. And I know not everyone does and I TRY to remember that mine is not the only Way.

When you brood on something for years it can tighten it's grip on you.  And somehow ignoring it for years has a very similar effect.  But if you talk about it, and think about it, and fiddle with it's context and look at what it means, and try new versions in a kind and non-demanding way sometimes you wake up one day and it's so gone you may not even notice its gone right away.  It has fallen away in the night.

Learning yoga is like that.  Things are impossible and then one day, you're upside down and it's the best place you've ever been.

You know what happened the eleven thousandth time I woke up and thought I'm fat and its awful and no one will love me ever and I am GOING TO GET IN SHAPE and be fixed?  Nothing.  Or I bought a 2000 dollar treadmill I used twice and gave away 5 years later.  Which is nothing, but with a very fancy price tag.

You know what I want? That 2 grand back. 

Shoveling snow is like that.  I hate that kind of physical exertion, hate it and my back hurts and it ruins my day.  And last week I was pitching 15 inches of snow off my deck and down a story to the back yard below and realized that while it was not painless - snow is very heavy, y'all - it was also easy.  I lifted with my knees and ass, and lifted my core, my back was strong.  I'm in the best shape of my life because I found something that I love and it makes me strong as a byproduct.  Shoveling didn't make me tired and I got up early with only minimal grumbling and did a whole lot more.  And it was fine.

You can force yourself to hold a shape - sometimes very successfully.  You can go to the gym and count your calories and make lists and follow through and you can look like you've changed something but for me all that was like water inside a jello mold.  It LOOKED right, but take the mold away and I spilled back into the same unhappy puddle.

I know, I know - be the change you want!  It is so the American way.  I'm a weirdo. 

I was reading something someone wrote about they way they harm themselves physically - it's part of PTSD for this person, a manifestation of terrible emotional pain.  And I read it and I recognized it and yet it was SO far away I could hardly put myself back far enough to remember that I systematically tried to destroy my face as an adolescent.  I picked at blemishes until they were sores and sores until they were scabs that covered my face and then I pulled the scabs off.  It's something I had no control over, and I hated myself for doing and swore daily that I would stop and of course, didn't.  Which allowed me to hate myself some more.

(I was very uncomfortable with how I looked.  If that's not obvious from the text.)

And it's not even a good example because I do not remember when this habit fell away - 13? Although really, it never fell completely away, I'd do it to a much more minor degree on my arms until only a year ago.  That stopped when I started yoga and I didn't even notice until one day I realized that there were not a half dozen small scabs on my shoulders.

It's not that yoga heals - it's that yoga was the right tool for me to begin to not hate living in my body.  (OK, I also think yoga heals but I accept, with difficulty, that that is not true for everyone)

And this is complicated.  I don't think you can break it down into discrete steps because everyone's life is different and everyone's troubles too have their own roots and tangles and it takes unique steps to unweave them into your self.  It's so easy to go, "why aren't you over that already, I got over my pain" or to say, "SHE didn't let this hurt her, why am I so fragile?" 

I wish there was a system of belief that it was OK to forgive yourself for being alive, and for getting it all wrong 12 days out of 13.  And that said it was OK to take forever to figure something out, because really you aren't, you're discovering minute things every day that all add up, like knit stitches, into a much greater whole when you look back.  I wish we were gentler with each other, starting right in our own heads.

I wish we gave ourselves time.

*  I can go on and on about this

Comments

[Charli]

Again, a beautiful post that inspires me and reminds me that someday I too may be different and have a very different life from the one I have. Thanks, Juno.

[Thalia]

Wow. This post resonated with me so much. Once again, you have been able to crystallize into words floating thoughts and feelings that I think may be more common than you thought.

Thanks.

[Amanda]

Yeah. Wow. I've been fighting my weight for years and YEARS, swearing I would work out, eat salad constantly, not hate myself, and between repairing my marriage
(which almost ended 2 years ago because my hubby had an affair...) and having my son, I realized that it was time, and there was a seismic shift in my mindset. I've lost 40 pounds since having my son, have run 100 miles since Jan. 1, care for myself enough that I can care for my family, and I've found the strength and confidence in myself to know I can lose the next 20 and not gain it back. I'm still trying to find, like you said, the system to forgive myself for getting it wrong 12 out of 13 days. I wish we had that, just like we have the ability to hurt ourselves and each other so badly.

[Jocelyn]

Yup, yup, yup. So much of this I recognize (up to and including the destruction of the face; and still, alas, cuticles). Up to and including the yoga part. Yoga was a huge part of my path to a healthier self, and I don't mean lower cholesterol. The things I learned from yoga got me through the nearly three years after back surgery when I could do yoga, and I was afraid I'd lost the best thing I knew how to do. And if the lessons learned from yoga can get me through losing yoga, then that's a pretty powerful thing. One step at a time. Life's a practice, not a completion.

[donna lee]

I have been walking around in a body that I have taken sporadic care of for 52 years. I worked my way closer and closer to change until Fate stepped in and put an LA Fitness (literally) in my path. I joined a month ago and have been slowly easing my way into a better physical state. They have yoga (which I did for years and fell away from) and tai chi (same) and I'm looking forward to working my way into those. It feels good physically and mentally. I'm just sorry it took me so long to get here.

[korinthe]

"Falling away in the night"... yes. Reminds me of this good song: http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/brett_dennen/so_long_sweet_misery-lyrics-1135345.html

Some things take a long time to push away but eventually they do fall.

[Barb]

What evalyn said sounds so familiar. I won't go into details (come to my blog, where I do :-), but suffice to say that while things still aren't all puppies and rainbows, the physical experience when the constant dread finally lifted was incredible. Awesome, in the true meaning of the word.

How did it happen? A combination of things, I suppose...the right medication (particularly one that's controlling my migraines...what? no chronic pain? wow!), therapy, sitting in front of my blue light, time. Saying over and over to myself, "Nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing." It takes us a while to talk ourselves into things, and unfortunately, the harmful things we say are also very subtle at first. We don't know we're saying them until we're yelling them. It's hard work to talk ourselves back out of them. Maybe once we twig that we're saying them, the first step is to take a breath before we say it. Maybe we still say it, but maybe we can take two breaths the nest time. Maybe after a while we can take three, and that gives enough space to try out a different thought. And then maybe we go right back to square one. But we get back on the horse. No guilt, no fear, no shame. (Thank you, Liam Clancy.) Just get back on.

[mel]

Love. And Thanks. That last paragraph? YES. I've been thinking on this a lot lately and am so grateful that (most days, lately,) I seem to be past beating myself over the head with every available tool or task that I've set myself too. Yoga I think is a huge, huge part of this for me (and maybe is or contains that belief that you mention? I'm digging in and learning more. Because that kind of belief system is one I can actually get behind.

[EIleen]

Oh, what beautiful, beautiful truth.

So much love and appreciation for you ~

[Gretch]

Always, always worth the wait. In your flawed, self aware state you are such strength. I know it. I never look at myself if I can help it - and you are a towering angel in my book - examining, noticing, rejecting, allowing. Thanks for a lovely post.

[Leah]

Lovely post. Thank you.
I am in the process of letting go of personal responsability for all distress in the world, especially my parents'. (Only child) It is a process. I have done around 20 years of work around my relationship with my father, intensified a year and a half ago by his death. Many councellors, therapists, priests and friends told me that perhaps I would never resolve the relationship. Last Friday I was in Chinatown and bought two cards: One a Monkey, as I was born in the year of the Monkey; and one a tiger since we are going into the year of the Tiger. That is about how much I knew about Eastern Astrology. The monkey card says Monkey people ought to avoid Tigers. That makes sense. The Tiger card stated the year of my Father's birth. I got it. I got that there was nothing I could do to make that relationship work; it was not my fault; it was not his fault; there was nothing wrong. We simply did not get along. It is funny how all the work I did and all my advisors did culminates in a silly event over a greeting card.

[jodi]

YES. Thank you.

(fear of winding up leaving a novella in your comments prevents me from saying more. But, thank you).

[Marin]

I love this. Thank you.

[q]

Thank you for this post. I have been reading you for a long while now, never commenting as I lurk better than Ohno skates... but wanted to thank you, especially for the bit about a way to forgive ourselves for being alive, and the bit about how it doesn't really take forever to figure out things, because everything we do is about that.

Stuff is going on that hasn't been great. Strangely enough, yoga presented itself as a way to help (already doing the therapy.) And then you talk about it, and about ways that you've hurt yourself, and come through, and that improvements cannot best come from fear (the "I shall be this New Thing IMMEDIATELY!" complete 180) and the frustration that comes from that slow kind of work.

The way you talk about things is very... enjoyable. That is probably not the best word. Calming. Thoughtful. Generous. Real. And so it's a pleasure to read you. Thanks.

[Cathy]

What a wonderful post in honor of my 50th birthday (that is why you wrote this, isn't it, even though you don't know me from a hole in the wall?)! So, yes. About the time, and the trying and the really trying and the pretending to try, and the therapy, and, sometimes, about the yoga. For me, yoga (only Ashtanga, to a rather self-punishing degree) helped for a while, until it didn't. And then I stopped doing anything, and now I'm doing something else, plus a lot of meditating, and thinking, and reading, and shoveling, and working, and trying to get through each day. But the thing is - I think the waking up one day and saying 'I hate this thing about myself - it must be changed' DOES work. It's just a step, though, in a very, very painfully long process of getting to the place where something truly effective can happen. But maybe all of those missteps and failed attempts and fake attempts and even the whining and complaining (and even the picking at the sores, and the cutting, and the excessive drinking, and whatever other desperate tricks we try) are essential for some of us - to just get us to the place where we can start. It took me 50 years to think that might be true.

[k]

May you enjoy happiness and the roots of happiness.

[Lisa]

All the work is paying off big time.

[evalyn]

Last week while driving home on the freeway, the fear of rape left my body. I felt it leave, saw it fly off into the sky, and tiny bright colored bit, going way from me. The relief was huge, physical and lovely. The most amazing thing was that until that happened, I wasn't conciously aware that I personnaly, privately held that fear. I imagined I had the general-issue fear that I imagined most women have that have never been touched by the reality. The human mind is an amazing thing, and if you go around opening enough doors, sooner or later, something will go out one of them.

[Lynn]

Hey. Just thinking of you. Because if I say more, I'll go on forever, which I believe I've demonstrated here.

[kmkat]

It makes me happy that you no longer hurt yourself.

[Ashley]

GOD. I am, perhaps not coincidentally (hi, oversized self-loathing teenager) also a digger of holes in my own face and arms. I am firmly convinced that this is my personal brand of cutting. I need to get back to yoga. Also, possibly to therapy.