Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Weirdly Out of Options

It's interesting how something that is a serious problem and a massive inconvenience can also benefit my life.

For lack of anything better to do, I've been "forced" to meditate, ground and center every single night the last few nights before I go to bed. I know I should do this anyways. It's really helpful, I fall asleep faster, and sleep better when I do all three shortly before bed. As someone with serious sleeping problems (it's been called disordered before), anything that helps is a boon. Yet, for some reason, these three things are massively difficult to force myself into. And it is forcing. Sometimes violently forcing myself to do things.

It's partly a matter of focus. Getting myself to sit down and just do it can be almost an insurmountable task. There's an extent to which if you don't have ADD/ADHD, you don't get it. You don't get how massively painful it is to force oneself to do something that you can't seem to focus on. It isn't even a question of wanting. There are things I genuinely enjoy, but can hardly bring myself to do because the forcing, it hurts. Literally hurts. If my hyper focus decides that it won't chose a certain activity, then that activity is not on the list of things I can easily do.

It isn't about my mind not being able to calm down. It isn't even just fidgeting too much. It's getting up and doing the most random shit before I even realize "Oh yeah, I was going to ground and center." It's being halfway through getting out the eggs before I realize I was going to meditate, not cook. It's jittery, excitability, movement and racing thoughts, even when I'm so tired I can barely move.

Except right now I have nothing else to do.

No cooking, no logging onto my computer, no texting or calling, nothing. I can't even read or write after about 11 at the moment. Well, not without extreme visual difficulty.

There isn't anything else to get up and do so eventually, I'm able to force myself to meditate. Eventually, I ground and center. And then I meditate some more. Because I finally have the focus, the time, and the space for it. So, I do my offerings, and I take my time. I find ways to stay up and fuck up my sleep still, yet...

This way the meditations are done. I am grounded and centered. And despite the anxiety inducing disaster that has forced this weird time upon me, despite the literal anxiety attack consuming my evening, I am doing better because of it.

Maybe when things work out (and I get a new place to live), I can continue with my meditating. Maybe then it won't take as much forcing, because of this time when there isn't anything else. Sometimes, being out of options is the best option.

Monday, March 25, 2013

PBP: Fasting and Feasting

I can't fast in a traditional "eat no food" sort of sense. I can't go a day without food, even if it just sun up to sun down. I can't even skip meals. I'm not diabetic, but I do have issues with blood sugar, and when I don't eat I end up doing silly things like passing out and ending up with a nice lump on the back of my head.

I fast by cutting things out of my life, and not around food. I fast by not allowing myself to watch Netflix for a month. Or taking a weekend to unplug from everything, internet, phone, tv, the works. Usually I unplug at cons. These days it is a bit harder as there are things structurally in my life that make unplugging problematic for others and not just myself, but I'm still working that out. At some point, I'm going to attempt the exercise of a silent weekend. Preferably, while camping or otherwise away from my home where I hear everything in the streets nearby. Silent weekend. Unplug things that are not necessary  and turn them all off. Turn off the phone, the music, even the fan. Journal, write, read, but do not talk or otherwise make noise. Sit with the silence. This is an endeavor I hope to accomplish at some point.

But one of the points of fasting is appreciating the feast. The abundance. And other than the verbal expression of gratitude to the people in my life who contribute to said abundance, other than occasional mentions of it to the Gods, Spirits, and other such Beings in my life, I am terrible at appreciating abundance.

I didn't think of things in these sorts of terms. Partly because I shy away from dichotomies. Boundaries are flexible, blurry things in my mind and life, as are definitions. So, thinking of feast as opposed to fast (or famine) is a difficult endeavor for me. They aren't dichotomous in the sense of opposites, but in the sense of complements, of counterparts.

Except a ritual last week (and why this entry is going up late) made me rethink my paradigms around these subjects. I was a ritual guide for another, and their ritual was one of cutting away unhealthy things and appreciating the abundance of healthy things in their life. Part of the ritual was a literal feast of abundance. There was more than we could eat or even offer. The rest were leftovers, intentionally, to be eaten at another time.

Also, it was actually a good example of giving freely to the Gods as well, because this individual decided at various points to give more in offerings than planned. They basically decided at various points that they wished to offer more, and so they did. I'm always pleased when people decide that to offer more (especially when such offerings create no hardship,) the Gods appreciate an abundance as well. But, as usual, I digress.

I fast in part to appreciate the feast. Now, I am working on structuring a new ritual for my life, feasting to appreciate the times of famine. Be it a dinner with friends, or perhaps just an overabundance of good reading, there are plenty of times for a moment of thanks, a moment of appreciation and a moment for my Gods.

Fasting I use mostly as a form of cleansing, and especially as ritual preparation  Time that feasting takes it's own place in my life as something beyond the mundane.


Friday, March 8, 2013

E is for Expressing Emotion

Oh, I wrote my previous E and D posts. They just never made it up onto this blog. Either written in my journal or in "unfinished" posts, they were done enough for me but not enough for public. Except all three were done in a manner that I eventually decided wasn't meant for public, that the need was to write them at all. 

Also, in case this wasn't clear. I'm trans, FAAB, and will refer to my youth as a girl and my present existence that isn't binary.


I hate crying in public. Not to say I haven't ever shed tears in public, after all, how would I realize I hated it if I had no experience with it? I hate crying in public but I've certainly done my share of it. Hell, I spent my last semester of high school crying almost every day through class. Or before class. Or after. Yeah, lot of tears then. A lot of tears that summer too. Tears from stress, tears from pain, and especially tears of heartbreak.

I never used to cry in movies. I was one of three girls in my seventh grade class who didn't cry when we were taken to see a (truly bad) movie that involved some pretty gruesome and depressing deaths. I just found the movie tedious and badly done. I never cried at/in a movie until I was 18. And that movie I went to see alone. Opening night, I sat in the theater, surrounded by strangers, glad that no one I knew could look over in the dark and see the tears on my cheeks. Outside of the movies, I cried far too easily. I cried when people yelled. Not because of any particular emotional response actually, just a side-effect of the way I grew up. Despite being good at handling pain and fear, they still made me cry. And tears made me feel weak.

I don't cry much anymore.

Tears don't come to my eyes. They haven't in the last three plus years since I started testosterone. My emotions express themselves without tears falling from my eyes and it is a massive relief. Pain can lace my face, fear or hurt lining my eyes without a tear falling. Shaking, trembling, shouting, whispering, I can chose my preferred methods of expression. Excepting movies.

At first, I thought it was just that the Star Trek reboot movie happened to have incredibly powerful emotional associations (to events that some of my closest friends are still coping with PTSD over.) Until I realized that the tears sprang to my eyes and my throat closed up at more and more movies. Films done right induce massive swells of emotion. Music and lighting can evoke so much, even when I don't give a shit about the characters. Maybe it's the bombast, or the sudden silence startling you into the realization of how much something has gone wrong... but movies bring tears to my eyes all the damn time.

Each time my throat closes up, each time my eyes start leaking, it hurts. It doesn't hurt in the sense that I'm in emotional pain and this is some of that pain leaking out, it hurts in that I am out of control.

Every tear is an ordeal.

I cannot control it. I do not always understand it. I am stripped of control and the masks I have so carefully constructed. I am stripped of defense and the armor of pleasant amusement that I have cultivated as my default expression. I am at a loss as to why I'm crying. I'm not brought to tears from a powerful scene exactly. It isn't the gut wrenching, knife twisting, moments that tend to do it. I'm just as likely to cry at a overly bombastic ridiculous action sequence as a class Joss Whedon tear-your-heart-out-and-chop-because-he-lives-on-the-tears-of-his-fans moment.

Every tear is an ordeal.

It may be witnessed if I'm watching something in public. It may be a private ordeal, alone in my room before I fall asleep. I cannot let the moment rest. I can't let it just be. And maybe that's why it keeps happening. I cannot let it rest until I understand, and I have yet to understand it. Maybe I'm supposed to be learning a lesson and failing.

Every tear is an ordeal.

One that I don't understand. I don't know what I'm supposed to be learning. Maybe even just to be more open and expressive. Maybe to let things be. I don't know. And, maybe there is no point. It isn't that I'm insisting that this comes from Someone. That this is because of Something. That this ordeal must be caused by the Universe for some purpose. I can learn something without all of that.

Not every ordeal is set up for you, not every ordeal is expected. Not everything is a path set before you, sometimes you trip and fall on your face, and end up breaking three ribs. Those random accidents, those genuine coincidences? Those can be ordeal too. The difference is in how you look at them. So, I chose this path.

I chose to make each tear an ordeal.

The alternative is for it to mean nothing. I've been an existentialist for longer than I can remember. The fact is, in the long run, none of it matters. Which is why all of it matters to me. Every tear, every tremor of my body, every coursing stream of self-hatred I feel as another tear slides down my cheek is of meaning to me. I inscribe each tear into my body and mind. I ask why. I search for meaning, for cause.

And so far, I've failed this ordeal. And that is okay too.