Winter Wonder

Last night (even though I know I should not) I had a cigarette.  I sat on my front porch, and three houses down, I could see a small tree covered in Christmas lights.  It was one of those awesome 20-something degree Minnesota winter nights.  It felt balmy.  I swear it did.

Usually I am not a fan of Christmas decorations prior to Thanksgiving.  But as I looked at them, I was filled with a sense of peace and contentment.  Last winter was a period of solitude (as much solitude as you can have when you have a family) and introspection for me, but it was a very vibrant, creative time in my life, too.  I was pregnant with my son, doing my YTT-200 (200 hour yoga teacher training), and working with Jake on Snotter Press.

My goal for this winter is to find a similar balance – to enjoy the solitude, the chance to focus within, while cultivating the same joy and creativity that coloured my season last year.

Untitled 11-17-2014

I got up at 545 this morning. I was so close to getting back into bed in defiance. I realized it would be such a stupid thing to be defiant about. Who I am defying? The part of me that wants something better and higher than what I have now? “THERE SHALL BE NO HAPPINESS OR PEACE INSIDE OF ME”? Tssk. Silly. So I got up and creaked through my somatic cat stretch and 4 rounds of slow methodical sun salutations, shivering in the draft that blew in under our front door. I ran through my prayer beads twice (54 beads a round). Nothing fancy this morning, just “God please help me” 100 times for the practice and 8 times for the sages (as the saying goes). November 17th and already we have frost inside our doors. We have plans to plastic windows with a vengeance this winter, and build temporary wind blocks outside to beat back the winds that hit the northwest side of our home.

I should mention that I lapsed on my daily meditation the last week and it was awful. AWFUL. The overwhelming inner turmoil was what finally convinced me to begin getting up so early. I was taken aback at the rage I felt inside my very bones from just a few days of not meditating. The hurt, the sadness, the confusion nearly brought me to my knees. I’ve heard that before, that if you start meditating and then stop, you will feel even worse than you did before you meditated. I think it’s a little like how each time you relapse on your drug of choice it gets harder to quit.

No students at my 10am class, so I use the time to write and make nit-picky little changes to the Snotter Press etsy shop and type this entry. Tomorrow Claire and I both have dentist appointments. I’ve had some really unpleasant dental issues the past few months, and it’s finally gotten to the point where I can’t just ignore it. I’m not used to having issues with my teeth. I want to have 3 pulled. Unfortunately 2 of them are the incisors the dentist started root canals on, only to discover the roots were too twisty to finish at their location, and I would have to go to a specialist in Fargo that my insurance will not pay for. I do not like going to the dentist. I hate having my mouth wide open for long periods of time. When I had one of my molars fixed in 2012 I cried the last 20 or 30 minutes of the procedure. When the tooth re-broke later that day and I had to go back in, I asked to have it pulled, but the dentist refused. I’m not sure if it was because I am on MA or because I am a woman, but nothing doing. I see no reason I cannot get a tooth pulled instead of repaired multiple times. When my left incisor broke last week I kept tonguing the jagged edge of it until my tongue felt raw as meat. I keep catching myself pulling my very grown-up indoor scarf over my mouth like a gag or holding it between my front teeth.

I weened myself off of my Klonipin and Prozac in mid-August, switched to Ayurvedic herbal supplements. It has been tough at times, but worth it. I keep my last bottle of Klonipin hidden in my bedroom “just in case.” I have not taken any, and do not plan to, but just having the bottle, the pills, makes me feel a little better. I remember when I started therapy in 2013 with D (the most wonderful of therapists) she told me that one day I may want to learn to just sit with my anxiety, but it didn’t have to be today. And I said, oh, of course. But really I had no plans to ever stop taking Klonipin. But now, here I am, sitting with my anxiety. And it is ok. It hurts, and it is not fun, but I can watch it batter my heart the way waves batter the shore, and if I just keep breathing eventually the fear subsides.

This Is What Happens (What Happens Is This) 11/16/2014

I finally decided to suck it up and accept that, with 2 small children, I will have to get up at 530 in the morning to have the time and energy I want to dedicate to yoga asana, pranayama, and meditation. Even though it is winter in a drafty house in the Northwoods of MN, I am just going to do it. I got up today at 630 (it’s a weekend), and just having that hour before anyone else got up was so great, I was able to stay more focused and loving throughout my day.

I’ve been craving cigarettes a lot lately; and there is a kind of horrid anxious buzziness moving inside my limbs. I love and adore my family beyond words, but I feel a very real sense of isolation and the suspicion that there is no way to escape it (the isolation not my family), except through my yoga practice. The isolation is not because of the weather or my lack of a social life (truth be told, I don’t like to spend much time away from my partner and children) or anything outside of me.  The isolation starts and ends inside my own heart and I am savagely glad for the winter, for the cold and empty streets and the sound of the wind moving snow all through the night.  I dug out my copy of Making A Change for Good by Cheri Huber and am going to start a 30 day compassionate self-discipline retreat later this week. I want to re-read the book first. The retreat will, of course, involve waking up at 530 in the morning. I don’t know why I’ve been fighting getting up that early. I’m always awake then, anyways, lying in bed and cursing myself for not being up. I remember that feeling from high school. Not wanting to get out of bed because I did not want to start my day, I did not want to have to go out into the world and face anyone or anything.

I have a taste in my mouth like burped up vitamins from (surprise) burped up vitamins and my bones are angry. They twist and pop and do not want to be still. I flip flop back and forth between wanting to be silent and wanting to scream.

Two nights ago I dreamed there was a tomb in the middle of our living room floor. A big black vault with some sort of gauge on it with a needle (like a gas gauge or a speedometer). There was a space between the edge of the tomb and the edge of our floor of about an inch. Then one day we came downstairs and the floor had receded, so there was just a catwalk around the edge of the living room, and the basement beneath our living room was the basement of the house I grew up in. I was furious and terrified that my children would fall into the hole to splatter on the hard concrete floor beneath us. The vault/coffin part of the tomb was on a long metal stalk – semi-matte black. (Here and now, typing this, I suddenly notice my grown-up indoor scarf is in my mouth – why is my scarf in my mouth? I used to chew on the necks of my shirts well into my teens, and I was much too old, much too old to still be chewing on the necks of all my t-shirts . . . ) I sat in my nursing chair and looked down into the basement. “Goddamnit,” I said to my friend, April. “If I fall asleep while I’m nursing Jorah he could fall and that would be it.” There was a flat screen TV on the wall and April kept her back to me. She was watching a program about elephants. The elephants wore those little circus caps – little widow’s peak caps with a plume of feather coming up from each one. And the elephants did not have any real expression at all – I could not tell if the elephants were sad or happy or angry or humiliated.  Their faces were blank as the grave and waiting for me to name all their secrets. “Do you hear me?” I said louder. “It’s bad enough I have a tomb in my living room but now my children might die, too? I looked away for one minute and this is what happens.”

This is what happens. What happens is this.

I WISH I WAS A BETTER HOUSEWIFE

while you are gone

at work, i sometimes

take our children,

wander aimlessly those

lit-up aisles; pick up

try on

this shiny thing or that.

in the end

i buy nothing because

none of it is what

i really want.  none of it

is you.

for Jake