a break

WARNING - discussion of girl parts and womanly bodily functions contained within. The squeamish might not want to go beyond the end of this sentence. Just saying. Mel has some gorgeous pictures up over at Cabezalana if you're looking for something less... intimate.

I have been battling hormone-related mood swings of late. To the point where I was really frightened for my own safety and freedom. I made an appointment with a doctor, who looked like he might have been Margaret Chase Smith's doctor when she was young. But he listened, and he didn't order a bunch of stuff I couldn't afford, and he prescribe me some hormones. Not a baby dose to start out like with most people, but a mid-range dose.

The past month has been pretty brutal. Sometime in late June I experienced what I believe to be an ovarian cyst bursting. Holy crap. Pain like none other I have felt in this lifetime. Wow. Like someone was trying to remove my ovary with a grapefruit sectioner and no anesthesia. I have heard that pain compared to the pain of kidney stones or childbirth. Wow. I never never NEVER want kids. I mean I didn't before that, but I sure don't want them now. Yowch. So, after the cyst thing, I got my period like normal, but the mood swings kicked in within a week or two of that. And they got worse. And worse. And then even worse. I became irritable in the extreme, then depressed in the extreme and then angry and filled with rage to the point where I just stayed home rather than go out and possibly do real damage to some poor schmoe who happened to step in front of me in the grocery store.

Then I had the doctor's appointment. My prescription cost me $4 at Hell-Mart, where I also picked up some black cohosh and some DHEA, both supplements that have not been proven to do a damned thing, but that have been recommended to me by women who use them with great success. I asked the doctor about using the supplements, and he looked unimpressed, but said they would do no harm, so I got them and started taking them right away. Then the most amazing thing happened. Less than 24 hours after my doctor's appointment, I got my period. 15 minutes before I took my first dose of estrogen. Within 18 hours of that moment, my mood changed, I was able to sleep (9 blessed hours that first night!) and all kinds of things fell into line. I am no longer depressed or angry -- well, no more than is my baseline disgruntled state -- I am able to work and concentrate at much better levels. I no longer sit and cry when I think about life and what I've got for friends and things going on. Things are better.

So, what made the difference? My guess is that my period made the bulk of it. Pent-up hormones finally broke through, if that is kind of the right term, and things evened out. It could also be the emotional relief of knowing that I finally had medicine to help - often the knowledge of a treatment's eminent start is enough to start the healing. I don't know, and I don't much care. All I know is that I feel a lot closer to human now than I did two weeks ago.

Oh, I'm still grumpy. Things are not all roses and sunshine and unicorns farting sparkly rainbows. I still wonder why Sarah Palin exists, how people can be so stupid as to listen to or believe Faux News and any of the people on it, why nobody has bitch-slapped Pat Buchanan yet, and why Flush Dimbaugh can keep managing to find new women to marry him.

That attitude is not likely to change. But the depression and rage have dissipated, and I am glad. That is all I have to report today. Tomorrow or later on I might tackle politics or cooking or something fun, but for now I need to drink my coffee, make some breakfast and get to work.

Stay tuned.

we did it to ourselves

I had an interesting exchange with a liberal political hack friend of mine today with regards to a blogger from the left who seems as much of a stark-raving lunatic as many of the teabagger and birther bloggers of the right. My friend winced at what this woman was writing, her unsupported accusations and insinuations, rumors and hints and things written as questions so that they do not actually cross the line into the perilous legal area governed by libel laws.

"So, does X beat his wife? We can't tell, he won't answer our calls so we can ask. Why do you think that might be? What is he hiding?"

That kind of stuff.

Wince-worthy? Sure. Especially since it's being done in the name of liberal politics.

Ouch.

We like to think ourselves above such nastiness. We like to think ourselves beyond the petty crap, the dishonest stuff, the underhanded, illegitimate, not-entirely-legal world of political hijinks named in the 1970s by operatives and practitioners as "ratfuckery."

We don't DO that, we tell people. We are the ethical ones.

For the record, ethical lines got blurred so badly during the heyday of ratfuckery that some boneheads thought it was a legitimate political tactic to break into the headquarters of the opposing political party and tap the phones and steal information.

The break-in was a bad idea to begin with.

The cover-up changed the history of the world.

Think of where we would be today if Richard Nixon had not resigned in disgrace, if people had not been caught and prosecuted and bribes paid and cover-ups attempted and failed, and Gerald Ford took over and pardoned everybody and then Jimmy Carter was elected because he seemed homespun, but then he turned out to be homespun and kind of out of his depth and then we got Reagan. Eeeeeejeebus. See what I mean?

What would have happened if Nixon had finished out his second term? What would have happened? Who the hell knows. Nobody can guess.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had a guy in his administration who was just bonkers. Guy's name was Thomas K. Jones, and he was the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for strategic theater nuclear forces. Jones got everyone riled up when he argued, in front of a reporter with a pen and notebook at the ready, that an attack by nuclear missiles was easily survivable: "Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors, and then throw three feet of dirt on top. Everyone's going to make it if there are enough shovels to go around."

Yaaaiiiiiiieeeeeeeee.

I remember that. Doors and shovels. Yep, way easier (and cheaper!!) than all those bomb shelter kits people bought during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Clearly Jones was a nutter. Nobody really argued that. I mean, nobody locked him up where he could not get out, but really, a lot of smart people paid him no mind.

But a lot of not-so-smart people liked the easy simplicity of his words, they liked that he told them a fairy tale that made them feel safe, and after all, it is easier to go along with a myth that does not challenge us to get off our butts, even if we have an inkling of an idea that it might really be a myth.

And somewhere, a large lesson was learned and a large lesson was missed.

First, the lesson that was learned.

(Actually there were several.)

Surrounding yourself with a variety of people is a good idea. Making sure that at least one of them is fucking nuts (but politically manageable) is brilliant.

Because while everyone flipped their shit about Jones and his doors and shovels, that one comment suddenly made Ronald Reagan's other neo-fascist henchmen look, well, not as bad as that guy.

Ding. Valuable lesson: being around crazy people makes you appear sane in the way being around short people makes you look tall. Doesn't mean you are, just means it appears that way.

The second valuable lesson learned was that vast numbers of people really want to be led like sheep. And sheep are happiest when other people do their thinking for them, just so long as they have grass to eat and someone keeps an eye out for wolves and stuff. And sheep will do things that are actually against their own best interests if they are convinced that there is a threat driving them.

Ding. Valuable lesson: you can get people to do what you want, if you scare them. You can get them to hurt themselves if you tell them it will keep them safe from the imagined threat.

Shortly after those years came the emergence of conservative talk radio, and the charge was led by that dipshit multi-million-dollar-a-year champion of the working man, Flush Dimbaugh.

Lots of people understood that Dimbaugh (I refuse to use his real name and garner the inevitable google hits and trolls) was a circus performer, a barker who riled up the crowd and got people excited. Lots of people understood that he made up great swaths of "information" on his radio program and that, even if it was corrected by smart people who were right, the fact that the lie was out there once was enough to give it a life of its own.

Ding. Valuable lesson: If you say a thing often enough, people will believe it, even if it is patently false.

Conservatives in America were learning these lessons very very well. They encouraged dipshits like Dimbaugh and his ilk to bleat loud and constantly, secure in knowing that a scared populace is easily led, to the point where it will hurt its own members and blame someone else for the actions of its own members.

OK, so we've established that the right is willing to lie and abuse people -- even its own -- to further its agenda.

Let's take a look at what happened in the progressive world during those same years.

At the end of the 1970s, the progressive movement was divided, scattered and unsure what to do with itself. The was in Vietnam was over, Reagan had trumped Carter and the hostages were home from Tehran. The economy was on the upswing, the ERA was dead, the liberals had all split into separate camps and the gay men had begun dying from a mysterious illness without a name. Feminists had ousted the lesbians, who went off to communes and pouted. Progressive men had been branded as sweater-wearing academics and wimps who were run by their wives, except for the Kennedys, who were just run by alcohol and their dicks.

At some point, progressives looked around and decided to get mobilized. By our nature, we like to be inclusive and honor the thoughts and ideas of each person, but somehow, every time one of our fringe elements would speak up, Flush and his crowd would point and laugh and we'd lose ground.

So we started cutting off our fringes. We tossed them overboard. The radical fringes of our political side of the aisle disappeared.Only a few holdouts remained. The Dennis Kuciniches and (pre-sell-out) Howard Deans of our party were (and still are) ridiculed and teased as starry-eyed true believers, pie-in-the-sky idealists and dreamers and fools. Kucinich was referred to by liberal commentators in recent years as "the Democratic Party house elf." LIBERAL commentators called him that. Including me. Paul Wellstone was viewed largely as a kook, a nut with such high ideals and ethics as to render him useless in serious debate.

We decided, for better or for worse, that in order to get votes, we were going to have to act like the popular guys who were presently getting votes. So we started doing things foreign to our natures. Instead of arguing that rehabilitation might be a better path for our corrections system, we "got tough of crime" and supported more prisons and less preventative measures. We buckled under to a lot of what the conservatives were doing, and eventually drew off some of their supporters. But in doing so, we had become them.

So we muzzled our fringes. Progressive commentators hunkered down in print journalism where they could write one or two pieces a week and never have to ad-lib a thing, and they STILL got hammered by the right. Meticulously researched facts and pristine prose have a hard time standing up to a barrage of myths and accusations applied with the four-inch fire hose of talk radio.

Some progressives got out of the game almost entirely, withdrawing to the ivory towers of academia where they got tenure and job security, even if they gave up the adrenaline rush of the political world.

Then, suddenly, in 2010, some of us looked around and said "how is it that we worked so hard to get a majority in both houses and the white house and we still are getting kicked in the gut at every turn?"

Well, a couple of things here. First, we have become our own enemy. We have been so careful to not threaten the dominant paradigm that we have become part and parcel of it. We have become more effective at shutting down our renegades than our opponents ever could have hoped.

And we have become the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm. We are running the farm, overworking our people, and treating them as harshly -- perhaps even more so -- than the humans had before us.

Dissent is not tolerated in the political sphere. Not among progressives. Conservatives handle it better than we do: "well, Flush doesn't speak for everyone, but he's got a right to say what he thinks. First Amendment and all that..."

Us? We drum people out in stupid, ill-advised, politically correct ways (can you say Shirley Sherrod? I knew you could!) then look the fool when someone mentions that the emperor has no clothes.

We had a moment, in the 1980s, when ACT-UP and Queer Nation and the Lesbian Avengers made some noise and made people uncomfortable and raised awareness, but by the time we marched on Washington for glbt rights in 1993, those folks had been ushered first to the back of the bus and then under it. We wanted to be like our oppressors. We wanted to not threaten middle-class white America, so we became middle-class white America, and anyone who did not fit that design was quietly (or not so quietly) told that they were not welcome at the party. Butch dykes in leather? Um, can't you just put on a nice pant suit? Drag queens and high femme boys? Can you at least try not to lisp?! Jeez, we're trying to be taken seriously here.

Our fringes have now gone underground, where it is safe from both the enemy without and the one within our own houses. Our fringes have become bloggers. Our fringes have been largely ignored for a while, but might be making some inroads as Internet access becomes more available.

But the point remains. How pathetic is it that we have done to ourselves what our opponents could never have accomplished? We have assimilated. We have been absorbed. The "progressives" of today are more conservative than Richard Nixon was in his day. Truth. Nixon created OSHA. Nixon went to China. Nixon appointed Supreme Court justices that today represent the most liberal arm (ineffective flipper, perhaps?) of the court. Yes, he was crooked and wrong about a lot of things, but his policies would be viewed as nearly seditious by modern standards.

So, when a liberal blogger rants and rails and raises difficult questions, I say good. We need our fringes. Our diversity is our strength. The diversity of any organization is its strength. Look at what the conservatives have done. Their party chairman is a black man. The governor of Louisiana is an Indian-American rumored to have practiced voodoo healing rituals and the governor of Hawaii is a closet... um, no, can't go there. The governor of Florida is a closet... no. The Senator from Idaho is..., oh, hell. Um, anyway, the Log Cabin Republicans are pretty active.

We NEED our fringes. We need them desperately. We need our version of the guy yelling about doors and shovels. We need our version of Pat Buchanan. I'd say we have it in Rachel Maddow, but she's smarter, more articulate and more accurate than Pat. Not to mention way better looking.

When I was in college, I was a student activist. I got on the news occasionally, and sometimes I made the mainstream queer movement people cringe. What was I trying to do? Undermine all of their hard work? A Maine State Senator came to my defense one day at a meeting of the glb (we had no T in our world back then) political folks. "We need Dawn," she told them (paraphrasing here), "Because she and her very brave friends doing actions in Farmington, like the ACT-UP folks, make is much easier for me to talk to people in the state house. Without her, and without them, I am the radical fringe."

Our diversity is our strength, not a liability. If we are ashamed of our members, how do we expect to gain the respect of anyone else?

I say let us celebrate our fringes. No, they don't speak for all of us, but they've got as much right to the First Amendment as anyone else, and I say let them use it fully. Let us not abandon all of what makes us us in our effort to achieve the same rights and freedoms as the rest of society. Media whores? We need 'em. Political insiders? We need them, too. Gay republicans? Not sure why, but we probably need them as well. Academics? Yes, we need them! Clergy? Absolutely! Big dykes and drag queens and foster moms and accountants and lawyers and Teamsters and poets - we need every bit of us, and we need ALL the input to make us strong. Some will do the political thing. Some will live on the fringes. That's fine. But we need to not eat our own in this battle.

Let us celebrate the liberal version of doors and shovels!

Oh, one last thing. Here is a very cool video that made the rounds on facebook last week. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEZoY-TMG4

expectations

Let's talk about expectations.

I often say I hold the world and myself to unreasonably high standards. That is true.

It means that I am disappointed often, by both the world and myself. That is also true.

So what do I do?

They say that happiness is an inside job and that a person who has no expectations cannot be disappointed, and I understand that.

But it seems counter-intuitive to me.

I have been doing self-esteem work and self-image work and affirmations for long enough that I know I get to say "I deserve to have my needs met."

Only when I hope that someone or something outside of me is going to do that, I get disappointed.

Always.

So do I rely on myself to meet my needs? How does that translate into my need for intimacy? love? gentle touch? Can I do that?

I don't think I can.

As a human being, I live in a world with other humans. That in itself, seems to be the problem.

I need other humans. I need conversation and connection and contact.

But they are human like I am and have their own frailties and faults and weaknesses.

They let me down.

And right now the disappointment I am feeling is pretty intense.

It's been a rough spell for me in these past nine months. Some shit has gone down, and I have had to deal with a fair amount of loss. Sometimes I think it has been an unfair amount of loss.

It seems that the universe is teaching me not to rely on any people, places or things to bring me happiness. It seems that every source of joy in the past nine months has fucked up in one way or another. Campaigns lost, relationships ended, sources of security and affirmation became sources of pain and betrayal, and joy and hope become anguish and need.

I guess I need to look within for happiness. I get that. But I'd really like to have something on the outside of my skin work out well sometime this year. I'd like something to go the way I'd like it to. I'd like something to work out so that everyone involved is happy and fulfilled. Maybe school will be that thing. I don't know. I am not inclined to believe in it right now.

You know how I like to rant every now and then about wanting nothing more in life than truth in advertising. I'd like things to work the way they are supposed to, for people to do what they say they will, and for the weatherman to be right every now and then.

I fall short of what I would like to be able to do. I suppose I can give the rest of the world some room to wiggle as well.

It is Thursday and already this week has felt very long. I have more to accomplish than I can handle, and something is pressing down on me, making it difficult for me to move. I have things to do today, but I can't seem to get out of my chair. I have coffee, and it is strong and sweet enough to motivate almost anyone, but I can't seem to budge.

My birthday is tomorrow. Maybe this funk is built around that. I will be 45. That means I am very likely more than halfway through my time on this earth. What have I accomplished? I don't know. I have built some things, some better than others. I have loved some people, again, some better than others. I have accumulated a sizeable debt in my pursuit of education, but have yet to have a job that successfully pays those bills. I live hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck, I drive a 15-year-old truck that was given to me when my other one fell apart around me. I have a small dog who loves me and a cat who alternately loves and resents me, but I think that's how those relationships are supposed to go. I am single, after a fashion. I have a sweetheart, but she is on the other side of the planet, and that makes the loneliness ache even more. For reasons beyond my control, I cannot go to her right now. I must wait, and I am not terribly good at waiting. I have a couple of friends with whom I have the occasional date, but that is not what stirs my heart. The dates are fun, but not emotionally fulfilling.

I wonder if what I am feeling is just loneliness. I feel disconnected, like I am somehow apart from the world and people around me. I feel as though I go through my day without touching anyone or anything, at least not deeply. I brush by on the surface, make a ripple, but don't stir any real currents. And I feel like the world does the same to me - like it doesn't notice my presence, like I am invisible, sort of. I walk around and know that there is really nobody here who knows how I feel inside, what my fears are, what my hopes are, what I'd like for lunch, or what I had for breakfast. I feel like I have to shout to be heard or noticed at all, and that's exhausting.

I don't know where all of this is coming from, but I don't like the way it feels. I am sure my hormones are playing a part, but I dare not just write this all off as some kind of menopausal blip that will pass when the moon changes phase. That kind of conversation feels like it minimizes what I am feeling, and I don't like it.

I read somewhere (I can't seem to find the clip now) that Daniel Patrick Moynehan said, while eulogizing Ted Kennedy, "To be Irish is to know that the world, someday, will break your heart."

It is tragic and romantic, to be sure, but true. I wear my heart on the outside. It gets banged up by life. I think it hurts more when that happens. I think it feels joy and love and passion more than others as well. I don't know how to keep it on the inside. And honestly? I'm not sure I want to. I guess what I need is to learn some skills to deal with the highs and lows. Right now I just feel them as they are, raw and real and present. I howl with the pain, and I weep with the joy. Might I learn some other way to be? I don't know. It seems kind of late for that now, like I probably have the patterns now that I am going to keep for life. I am stuck feeling things this intensely.

And somehow, there is contradiction in this post. I feel things deeply, down to my core, almost at the molecular level it seems, and yet I feel as though nothing touches me as I go through my day. Maybe it is just that I don't feel that I touch anything else. I can't tell. What I do know is that it does not look like she is going to call this morning (it is afternoon now) and I must get moving about my day. My heart aches.

new trechnology

OK, so I am not a big fan of new technology. Some of you knew that, and others I am sure could guess. Last night a friend gave me a new(ish) laptop. It is smaller and more lightweight than the big gray beast that I am typing this on now. It has cool political/sexual outlaw stickers on it. He loaded all kinds of necessary things onto it for me. Got me set up on a new gmail account, switched my email over from the old Outlook Express to gmail, did all the things I am rumored to need done to boldly step into the 21st century, and it was all very exciting.

Only there's a hitch.

Setting things up, he asked "so, what's your password for this account?"

"Password?"

"Yeah. You have a password."

"Oh. (long pause) Are you sure?"

See, my brain is filled with lots of important things, and is unable to remember passwords. For even 60 seconds, it seems.

OK, it wants you to re-enter your password.

I forget it.

What?

I forget it.

But you just made it and typed it in.

I know. But I can't remember what I made it.

~facepalm~

yeah.

You see, my head is filled with other things. Things like studs go 16 inches on center and it is important for things to be plumb and level and square and how to make them those things if they aren't and how to work around it if they refuse, how to measure and cut irregular trapezoids out of sheetrock to fit in a particular space and where the plumbers need to put vent pipes and how many holes the electrician will need to drill in my firewall and song lyrics to every hit record from the 1970s. And 1980s. And a fair number from the 1960s and 1990s, too. And all those little words at the top of the Budweiser label.

That's what's clogging up my brain. And somehow, I cannot dislodge any of it to make enough room to store a few passwords. Like to facebook. And to this blogger account. Oh, it will send my password to my Yahoo! account. Only I don't use my Ya-hell account any more and have no idea -- you guessed it! -- what my password is to get into it.

Sigh.

I have tried all of the normal passwords that I use for such things. I had them all written down on a sticky note once, but have not seen it in ages. I am screwed. I wish I could just plug this computer into that computer and transfer all of the data I want from old to new.

It is a given, of course, that the friend who helped me out with all of this is younger than I. That's fine. But it is frustrating that I am unable to master a thing. I used to be the one to do that stuff. I was the one "old people" asked to hook up stereos and electronics and such. Only with computers, I am out of my league. I am the "old person" now. I have not a clue what happens inside these things. I only know I want to turn it on and go where I want -- much like when I get in a motor vehicle. Turn the key, put it in drive and GO! I do not have to me a mechanic to drive my car. I should not have to be a software engineer to check my damned email or make a new blog post. Grr.

Anyway, that's my grumble for today. I am hoping that I can get this thing figured out, even if it means I have to resort to old-school technology and actually CALL some kind of customer support place to get it straightened around. Wish me luck. And as always, thank you for your patience.

Relationships

Yesterday was a pretty long day. I went to a meeting, saw my sponsor and got a hug, took myself to lunch and then went to Andrew's graduation. It was interminably long, but mostly not terrible. When his name was announced and he got is diploma, a fair number of us cheered and that was nice. Afterwards, friends and advisers were met, dinner reservations made and met, and chat of politics, feminism, unions and music from the 1960s to 1980s was discussed. Andrew was part mortified that I could banter so with his friends and part relieved, I think. I was able to provide a distraction so that he was not 100% of the focus of every one's attention, and I think he was very grateful.

A friend later described me as "a COA parent" and that threw me a bit.

To Andrew, I am one of his "old" friends, which means that I am a friend of his who is old, not that we've known and liked each other a long time.

Certainly, I am old enough to be Andrew's mother, at least chronologically. He is 22. I am 44. Yes, I could have been his parent. Only our friendship does not feel like that kind of parent-offspring relationship, at least not any that I have seen or experienced. I don't think I fit in the "favorite auntie" kind of category, either. Andrew is cool. We hang out. I don't ask anything of him beyond that he eat now and then when I make food, and that he not trash my place and not clean it up. I tell stories about the dark ages (1980s and 90s) of lgbt politics and he looks at me like I am a museum exhibit, and then tells me of queer youth street theater troupes in Boston and Los Angeles. We have very different lives.

He works with autistic children and I build stuff. I think we both look at each other's work and marvel, but we don't get too freaked out about it. He can do stuff I can't. I can do stuff he can't. That's fair.

I guess I play some sort of mentor role, but that seems odd, too. I don't think he really needs a mentor, so I try not to bury him with advice and direction. I offer what I think and know that he can (and will) take it or leave it as he sees fit. I don't get too terribly bent when he ignores my wisdom. Sometimes it's wisdom, after all, and sometimes it's not. And he's a way better judge of that then I tend to be.

So how is it that I felt a kind of parental pride when I heard his name announced and saw him walk across the stage to get his degree? I don't know. Honestly, I have only known Andrew for less than a year. We both worked on the No On 1 campaign, but barely saw each other then. We joined the church together in January. I guess that's when our independent friendship began. I think that was it. I was the 12-step person who wasn't a jerk to him. And the gray-haired person who didn't try to run his world.

True, I watch in exasperation some days as he spins with the drama and angst that I had at that age, but I don't take it personally. I know that it's part of his process and that he'll get through it. He complied, analyzed and presented a crapton of data for his final project. He can do the big things. And he can help an autistic child use the bathroom without getting skeeved out about it. That's pretty amazing.

So where am I in all this? I have no idea. I guess part of my brain wants to put me in a box, to define who and what I am, and to define this friendship in terms that others will be able to recognize. I think part of me is just still amazed that I know how to have friends. I didn't, for a long time. I did not have the social skills to know how to give and take, to not bully, to not manipulate, to not be passive-aggressive, to allow others the flexibility that I desired. I take up a lot of space in a room. I know that. I am a powerhouse of energy and noise and opinion and sarcasm, and not everyone can handle that or enjoy it. Some of it is the leftover stuff from when I was raised by wolves, but some of it, I must say, is me and probably here to stay, at least to some degree. I know that not everybody will like me, not everybody will be able to handle my energy level, and not everybody gets my sarcasm. I will hurt and insult people unintentionally, and they will leave. I know this and try to temper my words, but sometimes I miss. So, I am pleased when someone either sees past that stuff or else decides it's something they can work with to be my friend.

There was a time break here and I entirely lost my train of thought, so I am going to post this as is and try to be intelligent again tomorrow.

Tired of loss

It has been a year of loss for me, and I am tired of it.

Last year at this time, we had six weeks of rain. It wrecked my spring earning as a contractor with jobs to do painting houses and fixing outdoor things. Then the campaign for marriage equality took over my life, with its own disappointments and losses along the way, culminating in the Nov. 3 loss at the polls. Then the holidays, which were leaner than any I have experienced in my adult life, then Laura and I split, then my life changed when I got a call to ministry. I moved (another loss of a kind) lost my minister, got sick and behind on bills, and most recently my sponsor learned that she has a particularly nasty form of breast cancer that may abbreviate her time on this earth, I quit my church for the madness it contains, and I didn't get into the divinity program at seminary.

On the up side -- and I have to remember that there is an up side -- I have learned a great deal about myself, I have clarified my sense of purpose, I have developed a truly romantic relationship with a woman who makes my stomach drop in the most remarkable way, I am learning again, or perhaps for the first time, the fine arts of flirting and romance. I am learning how to play and how to be open to pleasure and how to flirt without the heavy strings of obligation attached. It is a remarkable time.

Oh, and I did get accepted into seminary, just not in the program that I wanted. Seems the ten years of on-again-off-again, up-again-down-again grades that it took me to get my B.A. in General Studies did not inspire confidence in the review board that I might be able to handle the rigors of graduate school, so they accepted me in the M.A. program with the recommendation that I reapply for the M.Div. program after I complete 18 credits. Really? That's very fair, even though the rejection (acceptance) letter at first put me in a dead panic. That shit ain't nice to do to someone. Just sayin'.

But the title of this post is "tired of loss" and truly, that's where I am right now. In the past year, I have lost a hard-fought battle, lost my relationship with my partner, lost my home, lost money, work and financial security, lost my minister, lost my church, and am facing the prospect of losing my sponsor. Now, to be fair, I chose to tend my relationship, and I chose to move, and I chose to leave my church, but that only mitigates slightly the impact those events have collectively had on my psyche. It has been a tough year.

I am struggling now to keep out of "victim mentality" that dangerous place where hope is lost and negative thoughts breed negative results and a downward spiral ensues. I have to be mindful and find the positive in each day. Today I am healthy and able to work. Today I will attend the college graduation of a dear friend and maybe take myself out to lunch in Bar Harbor. I have to find an appropriately inappropriate card at the local bookstore and stationer's too. Hopefully something to horrify and make a young man blush. My work is cut out for me.

Last night I did some meditation, or at least I tried. I found that my mind did not want to slow down and relax. I tried to focus on my breathing, but I was distracted every few seconds. This morning it went a little better. At first I tried to concentrate on my breathing, with similar results, then I focused my attention on a single droplet of water clinging to the outside of my kitchen window. That helped focus me for a little while, and then I was able to do steps 1, 2 and 3 and the associated prayers and meditation work that go with them. I did some affirmation work, too, because I find that if I've been away from my spiritual practice for a while, the first words that come to mind are "I am not worthy" and that is not where I want or need to be. I am worthy. I do deserve good things in my life. I am as worthy as any other person. I am as worthy of life and its pleasures as the birds and animals and the grass and trees and the moon and the stars. I am a part of this world, and that's fine. I don't need to grovel in life, and I need to remember that I need not grovel in prayer as well.

So there I am. A mixture of I don't know what. But glad for this day, even though I am tired of loss. The cycle of loss and gain will come around again and I will be showered with blessings to the point of befuddlement. It all evens out. I'll be OK. For today, I will be glad. I have happy events to attend, and I must find my umbrella so that I do not get soaked in the process.

breathing and meditation, take one.

how to submit to god?

how do I let go? This is kind of what I expect meditation to be about... letting go, clearing my mind, thinking of nothing but the peace and balance that is where I'd like to live every day.

Last night I had an idea of a breathing exercise to help with this.

Breathe in trust, breathe out fear.

Breathe in trust, breathe out fear.

I need to breathe in the trust I need and breathe out the fear that does not serve me.

hrrm. got distracted this morning. will try again later. this has promise, though.