Free Association

I wound up un-submitting the opinion letter for publication after I posted it here. I wrote it in a fit of anger (rage) that needed venting because it was churning around in me, seeking release. I thought better of it because, while I imagined it would strike others who agreed with me as being spot on, it would also have further divided me (us) from him (them), and that's the gap that needs to be bridged. I don't have any idea about how to bridge it, but I realized that I would have just strengthened his opinions and made myself into a target for his anger and on and on and on, thereby furthering the process of escalatory retaliation that fuels violence. Self-restraint is very hard for me to practice when I'm feeling something intensely. Where is the line between expressing an explosive emotion and keeping it locked up inside you? I'm never quite sure. The impulse to be a butt-scuttling stinging little beastie likes to stay close by, but that doesn't mean I have to give it free reign.

Here's what happens when I don't find expression for explosive energy: Liver Qi Stagnation. Which gives rise to depression and all manner of physical problems, problems I'm grappling with right now. It gnaws on me like this (written yesterday):


Back trauma. Who knew it would destabilize me for three months when it started? I've realized a lot of things about how I deal with pain. Things, truth told, I'd really rather not have to confront because they're scary and ugly and they stink.

I've been marveling all morning at my capacity to use up my strength to soak up the pain that's spilling around me, that I can't contain, and can't release, and can't heal. Fundamental problems for me -- using my energy to marshall through problems that I can't resolve, or can't figure out, or feel beholden to, like a degrading lover. My problems in a way are my darlings. They never leave me. Not even when I ask. They stalk me wherever I go because they just care so much. And fundamentally, these problems are not mine and I am not theirs and I don't want them anymore. I think I know how to proceed away from them except for this damning, constant pain, way deep in my pelvis.

It's an exercise in helplessness and futility to make progress, and heal, and feel stronger, and then be shoved three steps backward down to where you just emerged, and to do so over and over again until your energy is depleted and there is nothing you even recognize in yourself anymore except that familiar sense of misery and doom that wants to survive and take your life force with it.

How maddening it is to jeer at myself for being so weak and accuse myself of lies and cry at my own cruelty and realize that something dark and sinister in my psyche has taken me hostage and I do not have the foggiest idea how to diminish its power because I feel no power and I hurt and I'm afraid and I'm so, so sad.

Here I am, in my paradise, and every time I try to be out in it or tend my home or animals or even seek out help to put my skeleton in better alignment, I am back at zero, and I want to be at one. So you can be in hell in paradise. Christianity should know about this.


Yeah, that's fun stuff, eh? I'm aware of the potency of that kind of expresssed emotional experience and how it frightens most people. I'd be lying if I said it didn't frighten me, too. I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling ashamed of these kinds of self-destructive, heavy emotions. I know that they gain power when they're stuffed, but in the physical state I'm in, I can't vent them through vigorous exercise (tried that, which rebounded badly in the form of more pain). I am so blocked and fuzzy that I have trouble articulating them creatively -- articulating anything at all. This morning I finally recognized that I have come to a dangerous place within myself. The things going on within me are violent, and aggressive, and primal, and if I do not restore some balance, they will consume me. I have been here before.

What is different about this place I find myself in is what I know now that I didn't then, what I learned about my body/mind/spirit in acupuncture. It takes discipline and profound self-love to apply this knowledge, even though I am aware of its efficacy. It's the only way I know to treat the fear and worry charging around in me, wreaking havoc and chaos and disrupting any kind of flow. My own narrow-minded binary tactics of moving from one extreme to another have made me a victim of my self. Again. Time to stop the cycle.

Body, I say to you, let's make friends.

Letter for the Opinion Page

The letter below is a response to a couple of impassioned letters written by the same man and pubished two weeks successively. I direct myself to him and others who share his views. I'll let you know if it runs or not. (I submitted it with an introduction to the editor so it'd actually have a chance of running.)


Mr. Baker, I am not interested in having a debate with you as it is obvious that your mentality is fixed, in much the same way as your values are fixed and your income is fixed and your inflexibility is fixed, locked solid. You see the world in black and white, equate elitism with educational level, not class, and believe Fox News is fair and balanced. The fix we are in as a world is a product of narrow-minded binary thinking such as yours, and frankly, sir, I'm just not going to encourage such a dysfunctional, pompous discourse by engaging you in one. Rant on, shining diamond of a defunct era, rant on.

Somehow you still believe that liberal is a bad word and you wield it as some kind of sword to cut down free-thinking people. (Newsflash: It's not a sword.) What you call facts is what I call spin. According to you, my facts are biased because my sources criticize your political affiliates. By all means, continue to spin your cocoon of denial in tandem with your media spinners. Whatever makes you feel secure.

What really pains me is that our country no longer practices democracy and we will never rise up together to protest the lies and corruption of our present regime because people like you would rather deny that such a reality exists, count their money and faux security in the form of the bodies and minds sacrificed for a rich man's war, and believe that poor people are poor because of some inherent character flaw, like laziness or something, and rich people are rich because they deserve to be.

So please, continue to buy your expensive pooches and cars and beachfront property. I don't care what distractions you prefer. But when that ocean is pounding on your doorstep, and you're still debating whether global warming is a fact or not, clutch your money to your breast and hope it saves you. Because it won't, sir, and that's a fact.

Respectfully yours,
Jaimie O., Lincoln City

Jupiter's Gifts

I walked into a very bizarre and unlikely coincidence last evening. The Ghost of Selves Past decided to pay me a visit.

Now it is true that Michael Lutin wrote a very compelling bit on Thursday about how the New Moon in Sagittarius and Jupiter in the 12th house signified receiving a beneficent gift from the Universe where you least expect it (beneficent as opposed to the kind of "gift" that leaves you with puffy eyes). I thought, well, hells yeah, I am definitely in need of some happy surprises, but I really doubted that anything "miraculous" was going to occur. And it didn't, at least on Thursday. We did score a free, living Christmas tree, all potted and everything, after Doug spied it on the corner where we live, with the sign "Free Christmas Trees" giving us the go ahead to snatch it. I was very stoked about that cosmic gift because we couldn't have afforded to purchase one, even though we desired a tree very much, the undead kind anyway.

Happy surprise. Good fortune. But that wasn't the biggie.

Last evening Doug and I decided to splurge and went out for some Thai food. Our server seated us in a nice nook by the window and I sat down with my back to the corner, facing out. (It felt important that I sit there.) As I'm thoroughly examining the menu, I happen to glance up as people are being seated at the table directly in front of us. I noticed one of these people immediately because, from the back, she reminded me of a woman I knew in college. Same build, although somewhat larger, blue hair, same type of dress -- punk meets bohemian. The chances of it being her were miniscule, however, and it was impossible to know for sure until I saw her face.

So there I sat, feigning interest in the menu while glancing up every few seconds, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mug. I caught one of the people she was with looking at me very deliberately a few times, felt it intermittently when I wasn't looking, and this strengthened my suspicions that I was looking at the back of someone I knew from another era. Also, that I was being discussed by this former friend, GLBTA champion, and women's studies cohort.

I knew for sure it was her when I saw her turn her head to look out the window. Also when she turned toward the waiter to order. I even heard her voice. Unmistakable.

Let's just say that I had many visceral reactions to my certainty that she was who I thought she was. When this suspicion was confirmed, and therefore no longer a suspicion, I realized that I was faced with a decision: pointedly avoid her or greet her warmly. Initally, I was unsure of what to do because this person at one point donned a persecution complex, shined herself up to her full drama queen glow, and made a huge row out of something I was never even able to comprehend, declaring war on the women I surrounded myself with and, consequently, me. I tried to be friendly for a while but was always ignored. Perplexing. Ultimately I wrote her off as juvenile and to be avoided.

Since we'd spoken on friendly terms before I left Iowa, I figured all that stuff was ancient history. Plus, I was amazed to realize that it was her in front of me! Pretty fucking incredible. Then the issue became, shit, am I going to revert to old tendencies if I initiate contact with her? Have I really changed? Am I still that wretched creature who clawed her way out of the nightmare that the Decorah experience became?

Since I wasn't sure, I decided to marinate on it and began to eat my noodle soup, managing to master the chopsticks (finally! victory is mine!), while remaining involved in the conversations I was having with Doug and myself, somehow, simultaneously.

Maybe it had something to do with being able to eat with chopsticks after many failed attempts. Maybe it had something to do with the endorphin rush I was enjoying from having tossed caution to my backside's wind and gone at an aerobic workout with gusto, to hell with my uncooperative back. Maybe the reassuring flow of conversation with someone I can be totally real with bolstered me. Probably unequal parts all three. I decided I had changed, and there was nothing to fear.

When she finally stood up to leave, I put down my chopsticks and exclaimed, loudly, friskily, "Is that ____ ____?"

Nothing.

Evidently, it had been decided that any attempt on my part to make contact would be hastily avoided. I watched with interest and amusement as she awkwardly pushed in her chair without turning around -- at all. The body language of all three of them spoke volumes as they stalked briskly to the door, e.g.: my fellow alumnus kept her head turned away from me as she exited and got into their truck, which was parked allmost directly in front of me. It was painfully obvious that she knew I was there and didn't want to face me, literally. Sad, huh? Some people never change.

Pleased to say I'm not one of 'em.

After she was gone, I had a revelation of sorts. A full realization of how much I am not the person I once was. How much progress I have made. How much reason I have to be proud of myself. And I felt a surge of self-confidence and pride, and I felt like some bad spell had finally been broken. I laughed and laughed, and felt freedom.

I don't know if it makes sense that one non-interaction like that with someone I used to hang out with could change how I perceive myself. Probably not. I can't quite connect the dots myself. But that space of 45 minutes peeled away another layer of the old, and now I see potential all around, just waiting for me to realize it.