Harnessing the healing power of snark
And what I learned yesterday was that having diarrhea for 12 days in a row is kind of a bad thing. Who knew?
Just wanted to explain why I’ve disappeared for a while, as all my time and energy is now divided between mainlining Gatorade, waiting to hear which of the wonderful intestinal bacterias such as E Coli or salmonella that I’ve managed to contract, and waiting for some kind of horrific alien to burst forth from my stomach because, seriously, who knows what I could be growing in there?!
The other day I had a session with one of my new students. I was testing him on his vocabulary in preparation for a test, and we got to the word “edad”, which means “age”.
He couldn’t remember the English definition, so I tried to give him a hint.
I said, “If I tell you, ‘yo tengo treinta y cinco años’ (Literally, “I have 35 years”), then ‘treinta y cinco años’ is my ‘edad’.”
He thought about it for a while, and suddenly the light of comprehension dawned on his face.
So proud with himself for finally arriving at the right answer he yelled out, “I’ve got it-it’s OLD!”
As I believe I might’ve mentioned here once or twice, I have worked tirelessly through years of living with depression, only to emerge, hopeful and blinking into the sunlight, to discover that now I have to learn to manage an anxiety disorder. (As I am trying to make this a mostly-family-friendly blog, I’ll just go ahead and censor my reaction to this little discovery.)
You wouldn’t really know it unless you were my husband, and had to listen this every time you came to visit me in my office: “Oh my god, you did NOT just throw your dirty socks on my office floor, did you?! Oh, the pain! The burning! I’m m-e-l-t-i-n-g…”
I used to think that this was just one of my, um, “personality quirks” until I went to a new therapist and had to fill out an anxiety assessment. As in, “Does your need to clean interfere with your daily life?” (My Response: None of your damn business!) Also, there was an entire section that dealt with one’s anxiety in dealing with “fecal matter” (hm, can’t wait to see what kind of spam I start to get now), which made me feel a lot better about the fact that in 35 years I have never once changed a diaper, and as God as my witness, I NEVER WILL!!, bonding with any future nieces and nephews be damned!
The main way that this disorder manifests for me is that in my mind, whenever I’m reading a book, watching TV, listening to the radio, or listening to anyone speak, I am constantly counting the number of syllables I hear and gathering them into groups of even-numbered words that add up to eight syllables (as in, eight one-syllable words, two four-syllable words, etc.)
So I’m on this new medication to help ease all my symptoms of anxiety, and I’m eagerly awaiting the day when my mind will once again belong to me rather than my OCD thoughts, and then we bought the game “Brain Age” for the Nintendo DS. It’s this little regimen of activities to help enhance your brain function, and do you know what one of the training exercises is? That’s right-syllable counting.
Someone is actually lauding my crazy-ass mental disorder as a skill to be devoutly desired and actively pursued. In a competitive, timed game that rewards you, the quicker and more accurate your syllable-counting skill becomes.
Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right.
But of course I played it, because who wouldn‘t leap on the chance to actively flaunt what is, (unfortunately, in this case), the one thing they are best at in the whole entire world.
When you finish the test they rank your ability in terms of things that move, like a person walking, a bicycle, etc.
Can you guess what my speed was?
ROCKET. SHIP.
I can’t decide whether to celebrate, or to ask for an increase in my meds.
“I remember something that my friend Maria’s husband, Giulio, said to me once. We were sitting in an outdoor cafe, having our conversation practice, and he asked me what I thought of Rome. I told him I really loved the place, of course, but somehow knew it was not my city, not where I’d end up living for the rest of my life. There was something about Rome that didn’t belong to me, and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
…Then he went on to explain, in a mixture of English, Italian and hand gestures, that every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there. If you could read people’s thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be-that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don’t really belong there.”
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
I know exactly what she’s talking about.
I’ve visited places that, for no apparent reason have felt just as comfortable as a perfectly broken-in pair of jeans, as well as places that, for no reason I could see, made me feel so uncomfortable that I just wanted to peel off all my skin and flee the planet.
I’m in a very good place right now, and since my environment is such a great match for my word, now I’m really curious as to what exactly that word might be.
I definitely know some words that it is not. I spent many years forcing myself to stay in environments and situations that did not match my word, as apparently I sometimes like to take the extra special bonus course in Learning Things The Hard Way.
I served a tour of duty in BLIND OBEDIENCE.
I did some hard time over in IMAGE AND ILLUSION.
I dabbled in ACADEMIA and BEING A PROFESSIONAL.
I served a sentence as LABORER.
And I spent an inordinate amount of time in the land of VICTIM.
Of course, the fact that I was constantly beaming out a vibration of VICTIM into the Universe meant that I was constantly attracting people into my life to play the accompanying role of VICTIMIZER to my VICTIM. For me this showed up as an endless stream of low-paying, dead-end jobs with horribly abusive female bosses. We’re talking y-e-a-rs here. (I was apparently going for my Ph.D. in Misery and Suffering.)
And then one day, somehow, a little space opened up inside my brain and let in a new thought, which said…maybe…just maybe…it’s me…not them…
That was the first time it had ever occurred to me that if I was in a situation I hated, a situation that kept repeating itself in ever increasing amounts of horror, that maybe, just maybe, I needed to change something within myself, rather than something external.
I think this was a result of September 11th. Looking back now I can see that, because everything about that time was so horribly beyond anything I’d ever imagined was possible, it also opened a space where maybe, just maybe things could also be joyful beyond my imagination.
And so I finally gave my notice to that last, soul-sucking, dead-end job, and the very day I did I went to a workshop where I met my very first coach and began the process of taking responsibility for and creating my own life.
During 2003 and 2004 when I was doing A Course In Miracles (aka, “The Year Where A Giant Hand Reached Inside My Brain, Stirred Everything Up, And Then Turned It Completely Inside Out”), I learned that the woman who scribed the course had had a very similar thing occur to her. She was in a very difficult situation at work, and finally she and her boss (I think) said, “There has to be another way to do this.” And once they opened up that space, the Course was born.
According to the Course a miracle can be defined as “a shift in perception.” And that was what finally happened to me at the beginning of 2002, when I took the first steps down the path to finding my word (which I know, I know, I haven’t gotten to yet, but if I break this long epistle up then I have something to blog about next week too 🙂 )
So I’ve been up since about 2:30 this morning, dealing with some intestinal issues that can best be described as “explosive”, which means that any tasks that cannot be performed while lying prostrate in the hallway next to the bathroom door so as to reduce my commute time just aren’t happening today.
So in lieu of any kind of keen, thoughtful, penetrating, or insightful post today, instead I share this poem that arrived in my inbox via Jill Badonsky’s monthly e-zine. This issue is about the relationship between creativity and rebellion, and while I don’t have any personal experience in that area-(SNORT! Yeah, okay, I can’t even type that with a straight face.) Ahem, as I was saying, this issue is about the relationship between creativity and rebellion, and since that is a subject which is near and dear to my heart, I really appreciated this poem.
“They’ll”
by Cheryl Denise, from I Saw God Dancing. © Dream Seeker Books, 2005.
They’ll
take your soul
and put it in a suit,
fit you in boxes
under labels,
make you look like the Joneses.
They’ll tell you go a little blonder,
suggest sky-blue
tinted contact lenses,
conceal that birthmark
under your chin.
They’ll urge you to have babies
get fulfilled.
They’ll say marriage is easy,
flowers from Thornhills
are all you need
to keep it together.
They’ll push you to go ahead,
borrow a few more grand,
build a dream house.
Your boys need Nikes,
your girls cheerleading,
and all you need is your job
9 to 5 in the same place.
They’ll order you never to cry
in Southern States,
and never, ever dance
in the rain.
They’ll repeat all the things
your preschool teacher said
in that squeaky too tight voice.
And when you slowly
let them go,
crack your suit,
ooze your soul
in the sun,
when you run through
the woods with your dog,
read poems to swaying cornfields,
pray in tall red oaks,
they’ll whisper
and pretend you’re crazy.
