Changing

I grounded terrestrial logical overachiever dependable a loner a planner sole master of my fate haven’t seen her in so long this girl her bare feet secret diaries her free-fall eternal possibly calamitous her reverse swandive/skydive (not to fall but to fly) outlookless

Her vigor carnal adolescent irrational social inventive un-analytical she is unafraid chaotic kinetic keeps me up with her incessant dreaming wants to move to a fragrant country has taken up praying

I hope she stays a while

(Photo: realsimple.com)

Longing

For the feeling after yoga to last all day grounded and peaceful for one night of deep uninterrupted sleep for a dark corner in a hotel bar (or any sacred place) where your hand might touch my arm again for a pause button (I could have said rewind) a stop button for the way things used to be back when my parents had superpowers framed my paintings tucked me in tight for how fresh everything looks for travel for music my headphones for a place to hide or not need to for good food we never shared but most of all for Sundays with you

Imaginary friend

I have always had imaginary friends. The first one’s name was Clementina. She had chin length orange hair, smooth and straight, and when she came to visit the first thing she would do was stretch out alongside me on our bedroom floor and help me design blueprints for future department buildings.  

I picked my most recent imaginary friend out of a catalog, and now he lives within me. Instead of coming and going at will like that childhood friend who only visited every other week, he is ever-present and exists in what feels like a thick rope wrapped around my spinal cord. 

He runs the flat palm of his hand over my upper arm even though I have never told anyone that is the only part of me that feels empty. He whispers answers into my ear before any of the thousands of questions I want to ask have been formulated, or when in my apartment I am kept awake by the sound of floorboards creaking under the weight of dreams I haven’t had yet.

The structure of his thoughts is very different from mine (his ancestral, labyrinth-like, horizontal, elaborate; mine recent, smooth, simple, vertical) and yet his heart and mine pulse so similarly it’s hard to tell them apart.

In the early morning, when I can’t sleep, he repeats in that rhythmical way of his, always out loud, everything I try to hide, like a mantra, like an affirmation, like a lone witness to this new person I am becoming.

And this is how I know for certain I need nothing beyond the strength his presence brings me - clear, saline and invisible. 

I don't remember

You'll be with someone else someday

She'll ask you about me you'll search inside your head and look back at her with those liquid eyes and say I honestly don't remember

I don't remember her why I loved her what we did on Saturday mornings why we fought why we left each other you'll look at our life together thousands of photographs and wonder why you saved them you'll keep the ones I took of you against so many ruins all that sand and delete the ones with our arms around each other

Make a note of this put it somewhere where you won't lose it

I will always remember

Photo - Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

The watch

(Note: This here is a true story, but it's not recent. It happened many years ago. Thank you all for your concern - I should have been more specific. Mom: I'm fine.)

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At first, the gun was dangling from his hand, incidental. Then, because of what I did, he pointed it at my head.

The man holding it requested my watch, and I hesitated.

My mom gave me this watch. She bought it for me on the first trip we ever took alone, right before I started college. We went to Paris, just the two of us. It was September. I introduced her to the Musee D’Orsay. To do it justice, we took to savoring it for a couple of hours every afternoon instead of checking it off the list after one visit.

In memory of our voyage she bought me a watch that was meant to last forever. We were at the duty free store in the airport and devoted over an hour to the search, carefully considering different models. In the end, she spent more money than she should have. Years later, I take it off only to sleep and to shower.

I look at the time and am reminded of that trip, of my mom bent over in concentration, giving the decision of what watch to get the weight of a lifetime commitment. My watch, portable proof of the inherent intensity with which my mother approaches everything.

And now I have to give it to you, and I would really rather not.

The man’s hand is wrapped tightly around the grip of the gun. His finger is on the trigger. The barrel is pushed up against my temple. I wonder if osmosis is the reason my mouth tastes like metal.

How did I come to find myself in this predicament? What is a nice girl like me doing with a gun to her head?

Let’s back up a few hours.

I’m in my cubicle at work, ready to call it a day. It’s around 6:30 p.m. A coworker comes by and asks if I’d like to grab a bite to eat before heading home. I know that if I do there will be a lot less traffic once I hit the road, and, I’m hungry. I say yes. We walk out of the building and a few blocks later pick a small restaurant.  It has, maybe, 12 tables. We sit down. The server brings a menu. We order. The food arrives. We talk. What time is it now? Not much later than 7:30.

An odd silence, elemental, like a shudder, like cold air, comes over the room. Before I confirm the scene with my eyes, I know what this is. Everyone does.

I turn to see three men dressed in dark suits standing at the door. They are all heavily armed. One of them addresses the restaurant. He is calm, almost courteous. “If you all behave, this will go very fast. No one needs to get hurt. We want your wallet and we want all your jewelry. Please set everything on the table.”

One of them stays by the door, blocking it. The other two pat down all male patrons. Then they go comb through the tables, systematically, putting everything into cloth bags. Unbelievably, or perhaps predictably, someone tries to make a run for it. He is quickly pinned to the floor.  I think I hear the word “kill” and expect to hear a gunshot. I am grateful that I don’t.

My heart is trying to thrash its way out of my chest. I am quickly putting things on my placemat. My wallet, which was gift from a friend. My ring, that I bought with my first paycheck.  Small stud earrings my mother’s husband gave me for my birthday. I wonder – stupidly, I know – if I can take my watch off and hide it under the cushion I am sitting on. I determine that it’s not worth the risk. Farewell, watch. I feel its smooth, cool band; for the last time run my finger over the sapphire on its crown.

And you are thinking, how foolhardy. Does she not know that things are not important? Does she not understand she can get another watch, that the consequences of her wavering could be tragic, irreparable? 

What am I thinking about while the barrel of the gun is resting on my temple, while the owner of the weapon is looking at me impatiently, too nonchalant to bother looking threatening?

I am thinking about you. You walk to work with a briefcase in your hand and your coffee in the other, and are not astonished by your good fortune. You go to the movies without wondering wearily if the place is going to get mugged the moment they turn off the lights. You have dinner at a restaurant and don’t think twice about sitting with your back to the door. I bet you have friends who have never been held up. I bet their children play in parks outside.

Tell me, could you regard not ever feeling safe as normal?

How many times would you have to get mugged before reacting with indignity instead of terror, before you too faltered a fraction of a second too long before giving up an object you have imprudently attached meaning to?

You’d be surprised to discover what you are capable of becoming used to. 

I snap off the watch and add it to the pile in front of me. The hand holding the gun to my head, showing no resentment, goes back to its dangling position, a finger carelessly threaded through the loop of the trigger. His other hand sweeps everything into the bag.

The men meet back at the entrance of the restaurant and resume their positions by the door. “Please stay where you are. One of us might be among you, and you will get hurt if you leave the restaurant before 15 minutes are up.” They saunter off.

We all remain frozen, dried out like insects pinned behind a glass case. Long after our deadline has lapsed, we dare to stir, shake out our hands and legs. Some people start to cry. Strangers embrace. I, inexplicably euphoric, step out into this beautiful, lethal city of mine with open arms.

Sick

About eight months ago, after exhibiting a rather odd assortment of symptoms, I went to see a doctor. My regular medical practitioner was not available but I got a last minute appointment with her partner to get checked out.

15 minutes later I was diagnosed with a progressive, painful, long term, incurable disease that affects, among other things, your internal organs (like the heart and lungs) and is one of the leading causes of complete disability in the United States.  (“But, are you certain?” I asked. “Pretty much”, he replied. “I’m sorry”.)

The side effects of the medication prescribed to control the symptoms (such as liver damage) left me questioning if the cure was worse than the disorder.  Not taking the medication early leads to irreversible damage and deformity.

Before leaving the doctor’s office I made another appointment with my regular MD to get a second opinion. Then, I took a deep dive into learning everything I could about the diagnosis.

I have always considered myself clear-headed. It didn’t take long for the information I was taking in to turn me into an ineffective mass of nerves.

Have you ever felt a full-blown panic attack? Heart beating out of your chest, a thirst impossible to quench, shaky hands, burning eyes, a stress-induced fever? I felt like that every second of the following four days. I couldn’t sleep more than two hours at a time. I lost half a pound a day.

I arrived a few days later for my second opinion. My regular doctor began by saying it had been inappropriate to arrive at the above conclusion without running the corresponding tests, yet conceded the symptoms I was still experiencing where consistent with the diagnosis. I went to the lab, drew three vials of blood, then had to wait 7 days to get what she said might be inconclusive results.

I left the office and did more research. When you investigate a medical condition on the Internet, there is a fine line between “information is power” (my regular modus operandi) and driving yourself crazy. I crossed it. I could not stop myself.

By Monday evening, I had not slept in four nights. Wednesday morning, I felt like death would be an optimistic outcome.  This feeling was more pragmatic than depressive.  The disease leaves you crippled. Which meant not only that I’d be in unbearable pain and unable to do anything for myself, but that I’d take down with me the people that I love, who’d have to take care of me. Full time. I’d had a wonderful life. Would it be worth living unable to clean myself after going to the bathroom? (Sorry. Too graphic?)

A few days later I went to another doctor, a specialist in homeopathy, because I wanted to explore all my options.  The gradual process of finding other alternatives (and feeling better as a result of them) gave me a spark of hope, not just in that the diagnosis might be incorrect, but that if it was accurate, I’d find my way.

I got my blood test results ten days later. They were clean. No evidence of the disease. No evidence of many others my doctor had decided to test for to “rule out”. I cried.

To this day, I still have unexplained symptoms and am under homeopathic treatment, taking my health – what I eat, how I approach exercise – more seriously than ever. Most of the time, I don’t even think about the fact I still don’t feel 100% like myself.

I can’t summarize – not today, maybe not ever - all the things that went through my head when I believed my life was over. The fatal sadness and terrifying empathy I now feel for people who are correctly diagnosed with the most terrible illnesses.

How the cornerstones of our lives are so intolerably fragile that we are conditioned to not think about it in order to make life bearable.

For now I’ll say this much: if you have your health, everything else is solvable. Everything.

Photo: www.healinghomeopathicremedies.com

Stretch. (Or, why I love yoga.)

If you've known me longer than a year, you probably know I was not always a fan of yoga. I had tried to get into it without success, mostly due to my preference for being outside. 

Over the past six months I've been (happily) bitten by the yoga bug and am now completely, utterly in love (but, I digress). I would not be exaggerating if I told you yoga saves me every day. 

I could list thousands of reasons why I love it, but I'll focus on one: I am riveted by what yoga teaches me beyond yoga. The things my (many different) teachers say, and how what I hear is exactly what I needed on that particular day. 

  

To put it in other words, the teachings of yoga are not in my life because I strived to achieve them (my usual modus operandi). They came to me because I let them. (I am open to more, please.)

Here are some of my favorite examples:

Let go of what doesn't serve you. This is life-bending. I have so many ingrained habits that don't serve me. I worry. I go to the worst possible case scenario. I hold grudges. I feel guilt. I fume. I complain. I go in there gripping something useless (or downright damaging) as if my life depended on keeping it close to me, then hear "let go of what doesn't serve you". 

Breathe. Every time I hear this word uttered I am holding my breath. You can see how heeding it would be really useful if I’d rather not pass out.

Whatever you push pushes you back. There I was, trying my hardest to touch my toes. Overachiever that I am, I was definitely pushing, and frustrated with myself for not "doing it right". "Don't push", said my teacher. "Whatever you push pushes you back." (Whoa.) 

One of my teacher's favorite questions: What is true for you right now? I like to observe the first answer that pops into my head. (Lately, it's been quite consistent.)

Relax when you feel you need to struggle - this is how I learned I could stay in triangle pose for quite a while. Rather than struggling with it, I could relax into it. It's hard to understand if you haven't done it but when you do, it cracks your perception open. (Which would explain why sometimes I cry during poses.)

Very often, the teacher requests a pose I can't do. I see others do it. I know, I know.  You're supposed to focus on your own practice, but I always look at people around me in awe. And think "I will never do that. It defies gravity. It's physically impossible". This happened recently with the headstand. I regarded it as unachievable, until one day I did it. It was so easy. I felt weightless. And I realized right then, while standing on my head in the center of the room, that anything at all that seems impossibly difficult - anything  - would soon become easy, because that is what happens when you try something in earnest.

One of my teachers believes that she shouldn't force her students. That each of us should determine how much we want to do on that day. She describes a pose, then says "do it if it's available to you." "Do crow's pose" she'll say. "Or maybe not today." 

Another of the teachers uses full volume 80's music and makes us go through a Vinyasa at full power and speed. When I can't do something, he kneels in front of my mat and punches the floor in front of me yelling, "Do it! Do it!" or even turns to the room and says, "let's all wait until she gets this pose right". Normally, this would terrify me, but his attitude is so filled with good will. I know I can do whatever he asks. I do, and he smiles and winks and says "I got you". I could kiss him.

It astonishes me that two completely different approaches would both work so well with me.

I often come into the class dragging work (or whatever it is I am dragging) in with me. The teacher says, "Whatever you have to do won't get done while you are in here. Just be here. You don't have to do anything other than breathe and move through the poses". It hits me that I can take time off from whatever weighs on me, any time I want.

And my favorite one for last. How one of my teachers says at every pose - can you go lower? Can your back be straighter? Can you breathe deeper? He comes over, adjusts my pose, and whispers "Stretch!" Then repeats it over and over. Stretch. Stretch. It's such an incredible concept. Think about it: Depression makes you want to curl up. Darkness makes you shrink. Fear makes you wither. Stubbornness makes you narrow. Hate makes you lessen. Guilt makes you contract. Regret makes you shrivel. Negative feelings constrict. They weaken you. They diminish you.

Stretching is the opposite. It opens up your heart. It opens your eyes. It fills you with strength. It makes you more supple, more flexible. And it doesn't take much. You don't have to become someone else or do anything drastic. You don't need time to learn how to get it right. You just take who you already are, beautiful, unduplicatable, perfect, and stretch.

Photo: active.com