Mind full

I feel bruised today, not outside, but in. I've begun sessions in a mindful eating course, and it has kicked up a lot of very old stuff for me. We were discussing the basic human needs, based on someone's (whose name I can't remember) psychological model. First came survival, then security, then love and acceptance, then self-realization. Our group leader explained that each of these needs is first encountered and met in early childhood, and that having been put on a diet as a child threatens those needs, and makes it more difficult to meet them later in life. She also said that the more basic the need, the greater the emotional response to it. And I was sitting in that room, thinking that it's a miracle that I made it through with a personality at all. All of those needs were threatened all the time when I was little. It wasn't until I was adopted by the Lepards that I had any sort of foundation of security at all. I'm forty-two, for heavens' sake. Why does it still hurt to look back at that little girl? I mean, yes, I'm looking at present behaviors and working to make myself healthier. But oh, the issue of food and safety is still so intertwined. Add to that the IBS, where I'm not sure what I can eat or whether it will hurt, and I'm finding some very old wounds aching a bit.

I have had a LOT of therapy. Thank goodness. I have come so far that it just astonishes me some days. But this hurts, and I didn't expect it to. I expected it to be an intellectual process. Ha! Delusions of normality, I know. What I'm looking for is freedom from food as an emotional crutch. In many ways, it feels like my emotional eating is the last tie that binds me to that old childhood. Dieting wasn't just supposed to make me thin, it was used as a punishment. If I failed to meet weight-loss expectations, there was a beating. I don't own a scale, because when it gets to numbers, I get nuts. It's the same with good-food and bad-food. I'd like there to just be food. I'd like to eat what I want when I want it, and to know when I'm full. I'd like to know when I'm hungry for food and when I'm hungry for a hug. I'd like not to feel so bruised, but I feel it anyhow.

Sigh. I must be doing the right thing. I feel like crap.

Tomorrow is Christmas. Probably our last Christmas with Chris for a long time. He goes to Japan next month, and will be gone...indefinitely. I want to make it festive. I really really do, but I am so tired and sore that it seems a little bit impossible. IBS sucks. Have I mentioned this? I'm having some days of improvement, and I've started on a probiotic and herbal supplement that are helping my symptoms. I'm finding, however, that everything I'm used to eating sets me off. This also sucks. Dairy, wheat, fatty foods, raw veggies...and it's a good thing I have been tending vegetarian already, because the idea of meat just makes me queasy. What am I going to do? Christmas Eve morning and I'm still asking myself this. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go outside and climb on a bus, and go to the market. I'll see if they have ham, and if they don't, I'll just buy lots of potatoes, and make scalloped potatoes. Kelly said that's the only food he really wants for Christmas, so I can do that. I wonder if it would work with coconut milk?

I'm angry and I'm frustrated and I"m SO tired of being sick. But enough! I'm not fixing those things by sitting here crying over them. I'll do what I can. What I can't do, I'll let go. I'm afraid that what I can do won't be enough, but it's only ever me that has these huge expectations anyhow. So screw it. I'm off to find out what I CAN do.

Oh my. What a few months this has been. I've been diagnosed with IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I had a stomach flu, and first it just didn't get better, then slowly got much, much worse. I ended up in Emergency a couple of times, on doctor's orders that if it got worse, I was to go back. The final time, they admitted me. All I knew was that something was writing lines of fire across my insides, and I really wanted it to stop. They tested my blood, cleaned out my insides to scope me, then filled me with barium for x-rays. I'm not going to go in any greater detail, except to say that this has been one of the most invasive responses to illness that I've ever had. It's left me feeling a little vulnerable, as has the pain. I ate almost normally yesterday for the first time in over a month, and so ended up in terrible pain in the middle of the night. I have medication, but now I need to learn to cope with the condition. IBS is essentially a diagnosis of  'yes it hurts, but we don't know why'. They ruled out all sorts of illnesses, and what it comes down to is managing my stress, eating well, and generally taking care of myself.

I wanted desperately to ask the universe 'why me'. I really, really did. But the lesson is too implicit for me to ignore. I'm supposed to learn how to take care of myself better. Or perhaps to remember skills I've forgotten to use. I know what helps me manage my stress, and I know I've not been managing it well. I've not been writing, and perhaps that emotional block was bound to show up in the physical. How could it possibly have been described better than by the gut of me, the core of me; a system that has the most nerve-endings of anywhere in my body?

So here I am, at the keyboard, reaching in to my worded soul, reaching out to a blank page. It feels like I am poised on the brink of something life-altering. Something beyond physical wellness, perhaps. How peculiar.

Fighting my own nature

I am ridiculous. I love to write. I'm a writer by nature. I babble and scribble and yet, somehow, I'm refusing my own need to write regularly. I slip into my chair, disappear into WoW for a few hours. Clean house, read...anything except that one thing I need so badly to do. What am I afraid of? Clearly I'm afraid of something. I know that the best way to write a book is to sit on my butt and type words.

Part of what bothers me, I think, is how it has gone with my first book. I published through a small, new, local publishing firm, and I have to say that it feels an awful lot like vanity press. If I want to have a book signing, I am going to have to purchase authors' copies of the book. I am very short on fundage for that sort of purchase, and I resent it. Oh, I see. Maybe I'm less afraid than I am angry. Writing that book was work, both mental and spiritual. I touched on important themes in my own life, on the ideas that drive and bind me. While I've had excellent responses for the most part, I'm angry that the job didn't get easier once the book was done.

Bugger.

Being angry is a pretty flimsy excuse for not moving on. I've been angry about a lot of stuff over the course of my life, and I expect that to continue. Have I really come no further than this?

I want to know what happens next to my characters. I have a sequel coming for 'Spoken' and I have 20,000 words or so of a teen novel called 'Elvish has left the building', and I have a self-help book close to done...anger is not a sufficient excuse to stop working. I've been reading voraciously, mostly to avoid putting my own stories to paper.

Next month is the national-novel-writing event, and I will take part. I wrote a very difficult short story that I'd like to expand into novel form. I think I'll give that a shot.

So tomorrow, I will make coffee, and open Word before I open Wow. I have to let this anger go. It's stifling and important part of who I am. I have to accept that what happens with my book will, regardless of whether or not I let myself be angry about it.

I also need to talk to my agent about my anger, and I'm worried about that. I love her as a person, and I don't know how well we can separate our friendship from our business relationship. I definitely want to let the anger go before I have that discussion. I need to be clear about needs and wants and expectations, and I can't do that if I let anger splash all over them first.

In the meantime, I'm putting a sticky note on my screen that says 'Writing first'. I'll keep you appraised.

So I watched 'Dorian Gray' last night. It was a good enough movie, but a horrible depiction of corrupted innocence, and there was a lot of sexual violence and degradation. Long story short, it gave me nightmares. I'm still shaking off the lingering discomfort, and avoiding bed. Yay for passionflower. I take it in tincture form when I get serious anxiety like this, and it works better than ativan ever did.

So the first thought I have is that normal people must not have nights like this. How nice it might be to be normal. The thought that follows is...well, I'd rather be me, actually. If this is part of the price for all the other things I am, I guess I'll pay it. I still struggle with a sort of blurry picture of 'should-be'. I'm never totally sure what I should-be, but I have a lingering certainty that I'm not it.

Screw should-be. Should-be is a lie, and a cruelty to myself. I can only be as I am, from day to day. Lots of days are better than today was, I know I'm more emotional than usual because I'm tired, and I know it will pass. I don't like how my left side feels when I'm overtired, I get a tingly sort of numbness on my left arm and up the side of my throat. It feels almost like pressure, and it winds my anxiety even tighter.

I wonder how recovered I'll ever be from that childhood of mine. It was a long time ago now, nearly thirty years. I've come a long way, but sometimes it still jumps up and snags me, drags me down and back. When it does, I fall back on my most basic of tools. I breathe, and I say 'I let this go'. It's part prayer, part assertion, part demand. I say it until it's true. When the next thing comes, I'll let that go, too.