April 14, 2003

Oh yes it was!  What happened? Very little. That's what is so stellar about it. Ahhh.  An actual weekend.  Since Mom died Jan 27th and I went back to Kentucky, there has been blessedly little drama.  This is about the first time life that there has been a baseline of low-key calm.  I had a real eye-opening experience a few years ago when someone close to me asked why I lived my life in a "constant state of emergency."  I was taken aback by her question because it hadn't dawned on me until then that suck was the case.  I always felt as though I was a calm person and that all of these dramas and problems happened to me and I was pretty much at their mercy. I had a right to get tense and upset because of that "they" were doing to me.   On the tail of that tidbit, I got something that Gary Zukav said to Oprah which is, "People will seldom remember what happened to you, but will always remember how you responded to it." 

That was when I really knew that I wanted my life to change.  I just didn't know how to go about it.  I knew that every morning, I was bracing myself for what might befall me.  I went to bed weary and woke up with a feeling of dread.  It seemed like very time I took a step, my foot landed in shit.  I had no clue how to break the cycle, but I knew I had to do it.  The one thing that I did know is that if I did nothing, I'd fall into that "analysis is paralysis" crap and be stuck here forever.  This demanded forward motion, not analysis.  Analysis I could do in retrospect.  The goal was to leave. 

One thing I learned is that the energy around you is like a town where you live.  If you are angry, hateful, hell bent on revenge and feeling attacked, that is the "town" in which you live.   The people that you meet, guess what?, live in the same "town."  You only have to visit any message board on the internet to see the truth of that.  Like attracts like.  If you are fearful and cringing and waiting for the next blow, that's the town where you live. 

The thing is that while like attracts like, it also draws in the people who want to take advantage of that town.  You know, the people who come in not necessarily to live there but to take advantage of its resources.  Sort of like going to Reno just to get married or across the state line to buy fireworks.  When you are living in the angry, revenge town, you'll not only attract other people who are angry, but also people who make you angry.  If you live in the persecuted town, you attract both  the persecuted and the persecutors.  It's the yin and the yang of living in a town that is based in an extreme.  The other side of that is that if you live in a town of users and bullies, you'll attract both bullies and victims.

So the idea is to get moving.  Don't analyze.  Don't overthink.  Move out of that town.  Dr Phil really hit the nail on the head when he said, "You can't fix a problem with the same mind that created it.  You have to change your mind."  It amazes me the number of people who come to his show passionately defending their approach to whatever problem is being addressed.  I mean, if you've made it as far as Dr Phil's high chairs, it's probably pretty well assured that when you've emotionally explained why you do the things you do and he asks, "So how's that workin ' for you?" your answer is going to be "Not so hot, Phil."  With that in mind, if you are unhappy with your life or some part of it, as I was when my friend asked why I lived in a state of emergency, it's the height of arrogance and stupidity to try to change it while still thinking you're not going to have to change anything.  It's so... human... to think that you only need to control the things that go on around you (the very things you are helpless to control) and that you yourself don't need to change.  (It's always about THEM, isn't it? - smile)  If you are needing to move out of the "town" in which you live, forward motion is necessary and change is mandatory.

 The first thing I wanted to do was to take my energy, attention and tension off of the problems that were occurring as much as possible.  Day after day, new and more aggressive problems manifested from every direction.  It felt like I was constantly at war.  I had to objectify what was going on and try to remove my emotional responses that were attached to the different circumstances.   That way, I could see them as situations that needed to be managed rather than something that was personal to me.  Triage so that I handle only the most important ones first.  Let go of the things that I cannot change and that simply "are."  For instance, I can't change if someone in my life is an asshole, but I can take away their power to make me feel any particular way and can remove them from my life if needed.  I can't change that it's raining, so there's no need to get upset about it.

Once I tamed the individual things that were so troubling and brought them into a realistic perspective (and it was really, really hard not to have the panic well up again when I was doing that because some - *sheesh* - were doosies), I felt that I had to read between the lines.  I'd been so busy putting energy toward the troubles that I was only giving the good stuff a kiss and a promise and being briefly thankful it wasn't falling apart.  That was what was between the lines and was falling into the cracks.  I decided to start giving that as much attention as I was giving the difficult stuff (I also had to stop thinking of it as "bad" stuff or "negative" stuff.  It was "difficult" or "challenging").  One way I did that was to make a miracle book.  I grabbed a journal type book and every night, I would write in it for at least 15-20 minutes.  On the left side was my thank you list and I would write a whole page of things I was grateful for that day.  Some days, I wrote very, very large to take up more space.   I looked for anything I could find like 'the lights are still on,' 'it didn't rain when I was walking Dylan to school today' or 'there was enough hot water for me to take my shower.'  My husband and children were always on the list, so those were two easy ones.  I could also include my marriage as it's own entity.  No matter what, I had to fill the page.

The other side was for my wishes.  I would fill the page with wishes I had for the next day, the next week, the next month.  I also included at least one thing I could do to make my life better the next year and no matter what, I had to do that one thing.  It could be something simple like spending a half hour each one-on-one with my kids.  It could be doing my nails.  Cleaning the garage.  Just anything that would be a positive move.

After months of doing this, I really began to see the changes.  Become more detached from the challenges around me seemed to diminish them, both in intensity and in numbers.  Focusing on the good things in my life seemed to cause them to grow like sunlight and water for a plant.  As I began to just deal with the things around me that were going on and be passionate about the blessings and more utilitarian about the things that were challenges, slowly, my life really did begin to change and one day, I noticed that I was living the life I had dreamed about back in the emergency days.  My husband made an interesting observation when I was bemoaning once how long it was taking for things to change.  It had probably been all of about 3 weeks by that time (patience is not one of my many virtues) and I was threatening a funk and trying to avoid it.  He said that if my life was a speeding freight train and I was trying to turn it around to go in a different direction, I had to expect that it was going to take a while for the train to slow down enough to transition, then to stop, then to turn, then to go in the other direction, much less pick up speed in the new direction.  I am the consummate Veruca Salt.  I want it NOW, I want the WHOLE THING.  He taught me that change is wonderful, change is liberating, but change takes time and you have to keep writing all of the good things and definitely fake it until you can make it.  Before long, it's real and you aren't even sure how you got there.  All you know is that you're living in a new town and that other place isn't even a blimp on the map any more. 

It doesn't mean that challenging things stop happening, although they certainly do become fewer and further between.  It just means that you are looking at the problem with a whole different head.  You changed yourself and so everything just looks different from your new perspective. Life isn't perfect.  Life isn't always easy, but it's different and it's all just a matter of deciding what town you want to live and and what type of people you want to live around. 

Yes, the weekend was just stellar.  We did next to nothing the whole time.  Eric prided himself that he never got into the car once.  My friend, Georgia, came over Saturday night and she and I went out to see "Anger Management" (wickedly funny) and then she came back to the house and we had a ritual meditation.  It was just a mellow weekend and I can't remember the last time we had one of those. 

This is the first week that the kids are on Spring Break and we've all been adjusting to them being here.  They are...ready for my new kid describing word?...omnipresent.  Not that they're being evil or anything, just always there, working in shift and needing something.  :)

Tomorrow, I get to tell you about my day with the Kirby man.

For now, bed beckons!

Love,

Good God, She's Verbose!  There's More!