agnst

Let them eat steak

/ autumncircles / 9 Comments

I recently came across a familiar situation where I was faced with the opportunity to not do something I didn’t want to do. Toss in a little bit of having to do something I needed to do, but am not generally good at – and you have the makings of yet another blog post.

Let’s see how I fared, shall we?

In case you don’t know, I suffer from many “issues” one of which being I have a very unstable stomach. Food, which is supposed to be my friend, can in many ways be my worst enemy. Not only do I have the pudge-potential syndrome, I also have the irritable bowel one. Food choices are critical to ensure I do not end up writhing in pain for days. However, food is also my go-to mood adjustment device. Happy? Have a cupcake. Sad? Eat an entire bag of potato chips. Enjoy camaraderie? Scarf down enough Chili’s chips/salsa/ranch to feed a small nation. Totally depressed? Eliminate food altogether – which is clearly as harmful as eating too much.

[If at this point, you are thinking I need some sort of therapy – please, please refrain from suggesting that road which has been traveled ad nauseum. ]

This bit of background leads us up to the other evening when I was having dinner with some folks I am very close to. Food issues already range from the comical to the serious over the course of my life, so the fact that I have dire choices I am faced with making three times a day plus in between snacks only enhances any sort of meal-enticed environment around others because I then have to throw in the fact that I believe my choice must not offend or upset anyone, in anyway possible.

For many reasons, one of which being I had recently had the stomach flu – considered akin to a near death experience for IBS folks, I was not feeling all that great when I arrived at the dinner. It was soon revealed that we would be dining on good old fashioned steak and potatoes. No other choices offered.

I immediately thought, “Ouch – red meat on an already fragile stomach? Nope, cannot do it.”

Which was immediately followed by, “Fuck. This means I have to say something about it. Fuck.”

For just about anyone else, the solution is simple – state that you cannot eat the steak but would be delighted with the baked potato and be done with it.

If you have read more than one blog post from me, you also know I do not consider myself anywhere near the realm of normal. Telling someone that I am unable eat what they have prepared or don’t like the way they cut my hair or think the brakes they installed are not quite right or disagree with them over anything in general can be as difficult for me as brain surgery is for a statistician while at the same time producing some sort of self induced traumatic esteem injury.

[Again, if you have that tiny little urge telling you to suggest therapy for me – please don’t, pretend you did and simply allow me my eccentricities.]

I gave it a try anyway and said that I would not be able to eat the steak due to my stomach still not being totally healed. Whew! Look at me – gonna be tummy cramp free!

Then, when dinner came and my plate was being loaded and even though I’d been very clear that I was not going to eat steak – I was offered steak like parishioner is offered communion. I, again, said, “No, thanks. Remember, my stomach?”

The steak was held out in front, hovering in the air like a Matrix special effect by a pleading host.

“Are you sure? Just a little bit won’t hurt you will it?”

Did I maintain my commitment to my internal organs and refuse to eat the steak?

Or did I crumble like a tin can under the weight of an 80 ton tyrannosaurus rex crashing through the jungle on its way to a veggiesaurus slaughter?

Upon considering Breakfast…

/ autumncircles / 1 Comment

Don’t we all have some Holly Golightly in us?  The incessant race to get away from ourselves into the imagined person we want to be?  Running away from love to find more misery and reason to run instead of staying where we can find comfort and joy?  Is it the fear of not finding that comfort and joy to be enough that keeps us on the run? What if we were to find the love of our lives to not be all that we had ever been told to dream?  Or the happiness we are taught to spend a lifetime searching for to be a let down when we arrive there? Better to run from misery to misery, right, they never disappoint do they?  Sadness and despair are determined to not fail at their success.  But love and happiness – we have tricked our minds and hearts to believe they may not be real or lasting.  Do we ever believe the same about despair?  We all to often convince ourselves we will NEVER feel different, that we will always feel miserable.  What if we could swap out that same old fucking formula?  Trade out misery for happiness?  Keep sadness at bay rather than joy?

As deeply as pain can grip a hold of our hearts so can contentment and peace because they are our true selves.  We are born happy, unmarred, innocent souls with a treasure trove of laughter and acceptance and oneness.  It is only as we are aged by grownup time that we begin to filter out our original nature and retain the fear we are taught.

I did not know I was afraid of the dark until someone brought fear into my darkness.  I did not know how to be sad until it was told to me that must be why I cry.  I recognize this now that I have children with whom I have unknowingly taught fear much like it was taught to me.  That can be the only explanation for a grown woman to be afraid of a smile so all encompassing that it could lift me off the ground into the waiting arms of my spirit who unconditionally loves every molecule I am made of.

Should we never fear anything?  No.  Should we accept all that exists in our lives?  No.  Is it always up to us to find our happiness?  Yes.  Is this where the limits of my capabilities to stretch beyond this concept end?  Yes, for now.

I allow the din of many other voices to crowd my heart until it may burst into a million pieces.

I must let go to allow the symphony of the fugue fill my being until it pulsates with the life force that maintains its beauty.

But sometimes, I foget how to get to Tiffany’s…

Hot shame and cross blogging

/ autumncircles / 2 Comments

In this new world of blogging and having blogging friends and commenting acquaintances, I, too, felt some flashes of hot shame while reading others comments.

One in particular caught me as I read a friends blog that referred to my blog and the comments posted on it.  It triggered that flash of hot flaming shame I know only too well and struggle daily to keep under wraps.

There buried in the numerous comments from her fans was a remark that flushed me with that same flash of red over my head and down to my toes as if the person screamed it in my face hoping to get me to move.

“..so carefully constructed it was clear the author was taking few risks…”

Had she read my blog entries?  Was she writing about me?  Why does it bother me?  Of course I edit and change and exaggerate to bring my warped sensibilities to the small world I call mine.  From there cascaded a shame attack and run of what I’d written through my head.

I’ll show them, I thought, I’ll just write – unedited for 15 minutes and see where it gets me.

And that is what I am doing right now.  Writing plain and simple from my head to my fingers to my keyboard without hitting the delete key or backstroke – unless I misspell hte wodr.  (hahaha)

I set a timer and promised myself to do this at least once – not go back and sensor myself.  However, in doing so, I find little to write about.  I want so much to take these plain words from my lips and make them unique and flowered like Texas bluebonnet hills beside busy highways.

It’s the writer’s greatest dream, isn’t it?  To achieve absolution from all of the soul searching and human angst with a few strokes of a pen or taps on a keyboard.

6 minutes left.

My brain works much faster than I a can possibly keep up with in reality.  I certainly hope that I can spill out what is inside into a jumbled mess on white paper and then go back like a jigsaw puzzle to make sense out of it, rearrange it, alter it, give it a make over, and make it more enjoyable for someone else to relate to in some fashion.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could actually like the way I write without this added layer of cut and paste.  Maybe that is my old insecurities rearing their not-too-attractive head inside my much too comfortable skin these days.  I still, after all these years, want people to like me.  Like what I do.  Like what I say.

3:45

The other comments referred to Buddha and struggle and joy being one in the same (my paraphrase – remember, I cannot go back and check or fix).  If this is true, me and Buddha are tight.  There are moments when the joy I feel is so intense that a small pain erupts in my chest.  My daughter’s eyes.  Her giant, brown eyes that seem to go on forever.  My son’s smile – the one he lets me see only by chance anymore because he is trying to be so grown up, so tough at nine.

These are joys and they pang my heart.  Can you imagine what I make of my actual struggles?

Only a minute to go now…

I cannot even perform this exercise without trying to do it “correctly” – constantly checking my time to see if I’ve “cheated.”  What the fuck is wrong with my brain that I won’t let this totally go?  Will it be gone when it’s my time in heaven?  What if I don’t believe there is a heaven or hell?

Uh-oh…time’s up…

Will have to leave the rest for another post.

I guess I don’t type as fast at I thought.

(And, yes, these last four lines were typed outside of my self-imposed 15 minute timer…;o)