Recess is Over!
Good morning. We’re going to write most likely a shorter entry today, because we really need to get some school work done. Ok, that’s a hint … time to take medicine hold on. Pswhoo right on time. We had some problems after we had stopped writing yesterday. We lay down as expected, but then the tears started and we were feeling overly depressed. We got up about a half an hour because we couldn’t breathe anymore. After another half hour the crying finally stopped.
Three things were instrumental. First we listened to V tell us to turn off JD and relax, then we took some medicine, and then we had a wonderful long talk through IMs with Bon and Mal. I want to thank you guys … a lot! Mal is a tremendously gifted listener, so we have to try not to take advantage. We find a common denominator in all our friends is that they’re pretty smart. Sometimes, I have to slow down and accept some help. Many of you have left open doors. Because we depend so much on Dr. M., our friend and V., we think we are hoarding all the best helpers. We wonder do others need as much help as we seem to.
The thing with Mal last night … I didn’t feel like a victim or helpless. He asked such good questions that we felt more enabled to think clearly, especially about our financial problems so that we were starting to figure out better ways to handle the next reign of challenges. It made me feel pretty terrific and much stronger and more abled. This was certainly a gift well received Mal. We’re sending some {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{perpetual hugs}}}}}}}}}}}}. I think there is so much love between Bonnie and Mal that it floats over and showers down on people they care about. Like with V’s thundersnow … the right connection between negative and positive ions creating thunderous sparks! Or, in my case, on the receiving end, the flashes of lightening turn out looking like insight. But, no snow … that’s all over at V’s place! 15-18 inches we hear!
About 7:30 pm our smoochie friend came over with a couple of hot roast beef Chicago style sandwiches. They came from a local long time hot spot, rather than Mr. Submarines or Subway. It meant a lot of roast beef, juices and some hot stuff. We talked for quite a while and then we snuggled and played. By this time we were feeling pretty good. I think that is the thing about opening doors that had seemed hopeless … if you can at least figure out the next step, there is a chance of making things better, and that awakens the impulses to connect again with others and ideals.
We had to talk about how down we had been and I think our friend works very hard at helping us to try harder. He is very much a person that believes in mind over matter. But, our earlier behaviors made him cry and that kind of scared us. Sometimes it is harder to see his frustration with our situation, more than our own. We act out in dumb ways somehow not conceiving that this could hurt the people we love. I would like to get one day to the point we are taking better care of ourselves, but right now we have to make better decisions, because we don’t want to see the people we love hurt by us. His point last night is that the stronger parts have to be out and guiding us so we don’t do dumb stuff. I’m not going to try validating right now what happened on our end. Bottom line is that he’s right … we paused our guard. We knew better that we’re at a safeguarding mode of attention. We let ourselves be for a moment out of control. But, that cannot be acceptable.
Pretty much like that for school too. We can’t allow it to just slip by unnoticed. We need to better our commitment that we hold and maintain the knowledge that things are going to be ok; that we are strong enough and worthwhile enough so that we pay more attention to self care; the kind that happens right now, right here with every available second. We figure we are doing pretty well, but then we’re jumped by emotion and it’s like sliding down a steep hill out of control. I know that Dr. M. is working hard with us so that we can feel our emotions, but it has to happen in a way that stays safe. I feel know like we are trying to give ourselves a pep talk, or to convince ourselves that we can do this. We don’t dare go into our Dr. M. thoughts too seriously. Our friend’s point last night after we had told him we had been working on things that were important to us, up to the nap, was that when we saw our “stay” dissolve, we should have gotten back up and worked some more. He made a good point. Resolve, not dissolve.
A point was made yesterday in that we are best abled when we get the chance to talk out some of our issues through others or through our writing like right now. That has to be utilized to work out the harder feelings we had started to have. We appreciate you listening and giving us good feedback. We know though that the process of writing out our thoughts has to be something we do for ourselves first. So, we can read back our minds’ work to better understand what has to happen next and next.
In this respect … and from what little memory is telling me I need to look for a few moments at what had happened when we were falling apart for that hour. We know we were overtired. That is probably the first point. Our thoughts were free floating in that they came to us without our direction or influence. We know we need to give other parts time to express. So this part had to be ok. We’re trying to make it ok now too. I think thoughts of Dr. M. not being here to help had made us feel very alone. We had checked off in our mind the human resources that were known to us and somehow disqualified them from being able to give us the time and understanding. We know we were having trouble in that when we thought of looking into Dr. M’s eyes we felt deep pangs of pain. It was us holding honesty by a thread. That somehow he could care enough to invite us into a deep reality that life could be good; that we were strong enough to match the intensity with it that he knows and feels; all the time when we were feeling the pain we carry within us. Kind of like when we think we are giving ourselves over to God. But, this was on a person to person level. Somehow when we were going through all this, reworking it in our minds’ eye, we were feeling him drift away … the not available part of us. We weren’t able to fully comprehend it then or now, but it was like thinking that all chance we had at succeeding our difficulties, particularly with the multiplicity, we’re going to stop and I would be left with only the me of right now, not the me of me getting better every day.
I don’t know … maybe it was as a few of you hinted in writing. Maybe we are stronger and abled to take on that of which we had entrusted to Dr. M. This would take a giant leap of faith; like believing in ourselves … Our acting out yesterday belittles this point, that we are able. I should say here … the acting out was that we took a little more medicine than we should of. Not much … but, enough to spark our awareness of danger. We’d taken 7 instead of one or two. We know better, but hadn’t stopped ourselves. It showed carelessness on our part. Somehow maybe we wanted another way of saying … see this is how bad it is, but it was the wrong way of communicating. We now in having OD’d many times before 50 to 100 pills were dangerous, but we had not done that. But, even now we feel we’re trying to justify … I know through conversations with our friend that is leading us down a blind alley and we have to do a turnabout here. The problem with taking even this smaller amount of pills that we’d violated the trust between Dr. M. and us that we wouldn’t mess with our prescriptions. I’m wondering now if we aren’t looking that he gets angry, so we can deal with his anger rather than ours. Perhaps somehow unconsciously this is the easier path; pretty sure though it be the wrong path.
I’m thinking by now your all thinking we’re pretty crazy. Our friend last night wanted us to stop representing our pain that we’d wanted to stop as something from the past; we don’t need to deal with now. He pointed out how much we have going for ourselves now in the present. I was lying on his chest by this time; he had his arm around me and was talking softly. He had me look around at my living room which I had not seen for days, maybe weeks. He said, look; look at all you’ve done. You wanted nice drapes, so you got them, you wanted bookshelves so you got them, you wanted this terrific couch, and so it is here. You can do whatever your minds set out to do. But, you have to want what is available in life to have … you have to work hard to get where you want to go. You have to not give up, when things get hard. I know you can do this, because you’ve done it your whole life.
About here one could add as well I have to want school and to work for it. Too easily it slips past my daily grasp. Somehow, we’re not holding on to what it means to be actively a student. I don’t want to beat myself up here, just need to point in that next discussion. We’ve allowed ourselves to free think here for a while. But, to step back into the reality that is being suggested to me as good, we need to let go this point now where words my mind is thinking and focus on the words that are being set up for me to follow and then direct through the reading and writing at school. I’ve got to accept that I do have the ability to discipline myself to reach higher goals and expectations. That I am worth that effort and the effort will be good for me, because it will allow me to love and understand my selves and others better.
So, maybe at this point, I have to stop fumbling and concentrate again … my friend kept using the word “focus.” I need to focus more on what’s right, then what’s wrong, in the doing of unnecessary fears of me failing. A V thought here comes to mind. It goes somewhat like; to be anxious is to grow; maybe more so that in succeeding the anxiousness we enable ourselves to grow.
In school right now … we’re supposed to be learning about how the different cultures come to value aspects of life that are different from one another. Then somewhat compare those values of each culture within the practices of folk healing and therapy. I need to see this as something positive to me. Not be fearful of the challenges in thinking it represents. As we question the values of Black Americans, or Hispanic/Latino Americans, I have to look at White Americans and myself as a multiple American. I need to question my value and comprehend my sense of worth to self and others. Not as damaged goods, but through the strengths I’ve learned in fighting my own adverse culture. This has to be a task that is within my measurable means. Can you see we’re trying to build ourselves up here? All of our parts have to maintain focus on this. We have to ask, why it is at this very moment less important than personal self-serving whimsicalness of my self-writing. I know here it seems safer, but if we can just make ourselves start on the other … it will be good too. Maybe if I could only maintain an image of the bigger picture. Not the millisecond one that happens between my trying to understand my brains confusion, but the one where I can be useful out in the world. That part is much harder for me to handle. Our friend last night tried to point out that I have been valuable to hundreds and hundreds of people over time. We resist this thought. Someone now is budding in … what about the 60 people just stepped up into a fitness program at work. Ok, somewhere we do want to help people.
Maybe we could conclude with some final thoughts. That I, like most of you, do things in our life that will affect others. The more affect, the more we have to learn. Maybe some people have this ability to do without learning. But, I don’t really believe in that. I think we must be called every day to step beyond what we know to what is harder and more difficult. Otherwise, it would have been done before. It’s like maybe I could appreciate the fine moment in having the clients during Thinking Group be paying attention to fitness because of the transparencies and discussion. I hadn’t before done it that way, but even if I had done 100 transparency sessions, the material would be new. Maybe nothing changed because of that, but maybe something did. We opened doors in that we’d be coming up to a new junction in their lives.
It’s sort of funny now. Maybe we’re at the full round circle I need to be looking realistically at school. I set up my expectations to be following a certain course of events that I thought would make me able to teach programs of self systems (personal improvement). Here I am now within three days of having started a program for teachers and clients. Pretty much I’ve been at a clueless point as to what to do past the first immediate 24 hours. How do I use best what I know and what I’ve learned from school? Or will learn from it to improve the new “system?” How do I spark a difference in the lives of people we’re in a position to influence? Is the spark really of importance? Ok, ok now my minds are just spinning wheels. Thing is I’ve got to open again the book. Need to go to school.
Sidenote here … just got done talking with our friend. We were asking him for help seeing and maintaining a hold on the bigger picture; seeing the forest through the trees. We came to the analogy of being a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond. He said, “No. You are still in a little pond, but your pond is filling up with more water.” This took us a while to comprehend. It seemed easier when we thought of the pond as having been receded initially. He says everyone has there own ponds and sometimes they connect. Then we asked if Dr. M. was a fisherman … or, a big tree that had hung over the pond, but been cut. He said he was the guy that came to throw in bread crumbs. Then, of course, we had to ask if the parts were ducks.” Ok, we started to stray … let me think this through. Point being … that our pond has high enough banks, so it’s not going to be flooded, though he made a point we needed to take a shower. Hmm…
Not there yet, though V’s been by and it’s now 10 am. I need to finish here with a clear thought. Hmm. If I want to be a doctor like V and Dr. M. I’m going to have to do school. School can’t be something in our mind that just sounds like a rosy-colored distant dream. It is here. Today. First finish this post, take a shower, better eat, then click on the button that unlocks the school doors. FOCUS! There, we opened the pretty drapes too. Ok … ok … we can do this, right?
posted by Ann Marie @ 2/12/2006 10:07:00 AM
Comments: 4
