Memento mori

Everything I see is a memento mori, a reminder of impermanence. Not just the skulls, the rotting fruit, the dead birds and bubbles of classical artwork, but also the delicate flowers, the clouds, the newly born animals, the shadows on the mountains, the light on the water. I see a reminder of impermanence in the dimpled knees of a baby as much as in the spotted and veined hands of a crone. Everything is changing, all the time. I look at my face in the mirror and I hardly seem like a solid thing. This too shall pass. This body, changing and aging all the time, will soon be gone. Life passes in the blink of an eye. Why pretend otherwise?

This is reality. I don't find it sad or depressing, but rather beautiful, right and perfect. Without death, each moment of life would not have the immeasurable value that it does. We value precious metals because they are a finite resource. So is this life.

My mind runs over these well worn tracks again and again. Am I repeating myself? Perhaps. But this is one of the most beautiful truths of my life, a message well worth sharing.


2017-05-13

falling in love

“They sat together in the park

as the evening sky grew dark.

She looked at him and he felt a spark

tingle to his bones...”

-Bob Dylan

When I fell in love with T, it felt just like that. We were at his ranch in the mountains above the Big Sur coast, so far out in the wilderness that no lights from other houses could be seen, no city skyglow to obscure the stars. We were together on a redwood slab bench out under the stars, which were piercingly bright. At the moment I fell in love with him, if felt like one of the stars had fallen from the heavens and was drilling into the center of my chest. It was an immensely pleasurable and powerful sensation, like a burning ember hitting me in the sternum and burning straight into me, directly to my spine, slowly illuminating my entire chest cavity with warmth and dazzling, expanding starlight. I’d never felt anything like it.

“That’s a very mysterious thing, that electric thing that happens.”

- Joseph Campbell

I had a similar experience when I fell in love with R, that first magic week we spent together. We were lying together and alternating long periods of kissing and caressing with what I would call deep soul gazing. We were staring into each other’s eyes, and a wider area on that same place on my chest lit up, filling my chest cavity with that same beautiful spreading feeling of tingling warmth and light. The tingling warmth felt like it sank into the marrow of my bones, and then radiated out to the tips of my fingers and toes, to my nose and lips and earlobes, and up to the top of my head. I remember feeling that tingling, glowing wave of love expanding out from my chest, moving up my neck and face like a waterline. I felt like love was pouring out of my eyes for weeks afterwards.

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

- Sarah Dessen

I fell completely in love with E the first night we went to the hot springs together for the full moon. I’d felt little zings and zaps to my chest with him before. I knew I was falling in love with him. But that night at the hot springs, suddenly it felt like fireworks exploding in my chest, bright and white as the moon. It sizzled out to all my nerve endings, and up to the crown of my skull like white-hot bolts of lightning. I knew E much better than I’d known T or R at the moment love struck. I’d only known them a matter of days (though in both cases, we’d been together almost nonstop on those days). I think the depth of knowing with E increased the intensity of the experience.

Funny how every time has been a little different. But all three were head-over heels, ‘this is totally irrational and crazy but I don’t care’ loves. I still love all three of those men, but in very different ways. I have loved and do love other men, but only felt that earth-shaking, life-changing moment of it those three times.

I don’t think this is a universal experience, based on the few people I’ve asked. When people talk about “feeling that spark,” they seem to be referring to the feeling of sexual attraction more than anything else.

You know that feeling when you see someone and the attraction shocks you with its intensity, like a punch to the gut? Many people call it “love at first sight.” Personally, I think “lust at first sight” is more accurate. In The Godfather, Mario Puzo called it the “thunderbolt.” That’s the best one word description for that feeling I’ve ever seen. Sometimes it isn’t the first time you see someone, but rather the first time you see them smile. Or that first eye contact, the first moment of connection. The feeling might be more or less intense based on your hormone levels at the time and your instinctive response to the person’s appearance.

I once saw a drop-dead gorgeous man I’d never seen before at the grocery store and literally felt like I’d been zapped with electricity and punched in the gut all at once. It did hit me in the gut, not the chest. I think that might be an important distinction. The attraction I felt was so strong it shocked me, and yet I felt a sense of recognition, like I knew this man, had met him before. His face was so familiar to me. I actually gasped aloud. My heart leapt and started pounding and I felt myself flush from head to toe. I heard a buzzing in my ears. We made eye contact and smiles and and hellos were exchanged (with a deep blush on my part). We passed each other, and as I turned to say something more, I realized that I recognized the kid he had with him; that this was the recently divorced ex of a friend. So despite that feeling that some people would identify as “love at first sight,” I didn’t pursue a connection. Instead, I walked away. I’ve never experienced that degree of thunderbolt with anyone else.

I saw this man around town a few times since that day, and that intense attraction had completely vanished. It was so strange in it’s intensity partly because this man was not at all to my “taste” in looks. He had light-colored hair and light eyes and a very northern European look. I prefer a dark-eyed and dark-haired southern European, Middle Eastern or Asian look.

2017-02-03

why I write about my pain

I just heard this on the Dear Sugar podcast: “Writing can be a powerful tool for social change, but only if you write about the things that are uncomfortable. What if Anne Frank had just written about trees?”

It was exactly what I needed to hear, because as I write about my own experience, much of it traumatic and uncomfortable, I sometimes feel like it is a narcissistic enterprise, more valuable for venting or self-expression than anything else.

This reminded me why I speak up about my trauma, and why I post those writings publicly. I don’t want sympathy, I want others with similar experiences to know that they are not alone. I want the family members of abusers and victims to realize that even though the victims might seem to be okay, they aren’t. Speak up. Do something. Stop it from happening. Perhaps abusers will also read my writings and be brought face-to-face with what they have done to others.

We are so good at hiding our injuries. We are animals, after all, and what happens to the wounded antelope? But we aren’t a part of the food chain in that way any more.

For me, baring my wounds though my writing and in conversation with friends and family has not only helped me to work through these experiences and let go of my shame around them, but has also prompted others to reveal their own stories to me, which I hope was helpful to them on their own journeys of healing.

By ignoring our traumas, and not talking about abuse, we are continuing to brush abuse under the rug. Far better to bring it out in the open, to see it, to acknowledge it. That is, I believe, the first step towards change.

2017-01-31

mindful dreams

In my journey of healing my body, I have come to realize that past disassociation due to childhood trauma and lifelong pain has damaged my connection to my body, has interrupted my receipt of signals, disrupted essential communications. I’ve ignored the discomfort until it turns into pain, and ignored the pain until my health is in crisis.

Mindfulness is my tool to repair the connection: checking in regularly with my body throughout the day, whatever I am doing. It has become a habit, so much so that body awareness is now seeping into my dreams more and more often. I’m dreaming and suddenly I feel my body lying in my warm bed: so relaxed, so comfortable. I feel the slackness of my muscles. And in the dream, I collapse to the ground and lie there, unable to rise, as the dream continues all around me. I try to rise, again and again, but my muscles just won’t contract. So I lie there in the dirt, on the rocks, on the floor, on the stairs, wherever I was in the dreamscape when I collapsed.

It happens so often now that it has become my new tip off that I am dreaming, though usually I choose to forget, and slip back into the flow of my subconscious, rather than directing, controlling the dream. Truly, I have even less control, as now I am mainly an observer of the dream’s storyline, rather than a participant.

One day, I awoke so slowly, so languorously, and brought the awareness of my body with me the entire way up into wakefulness. The dream flowed directly into my morning body scan. Now this happens nearly every time I wake.

Lucid and semi-lucid dreams are usual for me, as is occasional sleep paralysis. The merging of the two is an experience I’ve never heard anyone else recount.

2017-01-21

all bleeding ends eventually

I feel the blade
sliding into my belly

again and again.
Burning, screaming agony.

Gaping wounds

oozing dark red blood.

I watch, helpless,

as they multiply,

one after another.

But there is no blade in sight.

No one but me,

standing alone

in a field of ripe golden wheat

swaying in the wind.

I crumple to the ground,

the dirt between my fingers.

Blood spatters in the dust,

among the fallen seed heads.

The dream ends,

but still the pain increases.

I scream silently, biting my fist.

I writhe, curling into a ball,

my eyes watering,

my limbs trembling.

I can barely breathe.

“This too shall pass,”

I say it in my mind
again and again.

It reminds me of that other proverb:

“All bleeding ends eventually,

one way or another.”

The truth,

in counterpoint to the clichéd lie

that we are never given more

than we can handle.


2017-01-03