The movie Polite Society…Banh Mi Factory…pain, resets, and woo
Yesterday Ray and I went to the movie Polite Society, a Bollywood-esque Desi movie about sisters and kicking ass. All the characters are delightfully flawed. If you get a chance to see the move in theaters, do go! And watch for the stuff happening in the background; Ray kept pointing out things I missed.
We also stopped for banh mi sandwiches at the Banh Mi Factory. Excellent. I got mine with ALL THE THINGS on it and slathered on the hot sauce. It needed slightly more pickled salad; I’ll ask for more next time.
Banh mi sandwiches are one of the combination of French colonialism and Vietnamese savoir-faire. French bread, pickled daikon salad, pate, char siu-like pork, jalapenos, cilantro, meatballs…super good. (If you’re in Denver there was a Vietnamese bakery next to the business Costco with really great ones by a local family, if that’s still there, or you could try Paris Banh Mi, part of the same chain as the one I went to.)
I struggled with menopause stuff all day yesterday, lots of hot flashes and cramps. I can take one or the other, but when they come together it’s like there’s some kind of damage multiplier involved. Not fun.
I also (over a year after backing the Kickstarter, because of the huge shipping kerfluffle that hit everyone) got the Brinks Literary Tarot Deck in the mail and have run two spreads with it, one smaller and one larger.
Every tarot deck has a different “voice” to it, probably influenced by the images on the cards hitting one’s subconscious differently. Both the spreads I dealt had the same overall message: STRAP ON BITCHES.* This is a very dramatic deck. Appropriately.
Bitches, I am strapped. As the great Yul Brynner once said, “So let it be written; so let it be done.”
*Looking up this phrase may lead to results not intended by either me or my tarot deck.
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Right, the following is probably going to end up long and kind of nutty (again). Internal things are hitting fast and hard as they work their way out. I’ll figure out how to frame this in more rational terms later, I suppose, but for now I’m going to leave in the woo.
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I had a reset last night, the thing where it feels like my conscious self gets turned off and turned back on again, with a bunch of messing around and reprogramming in between. It feels like a character getting ganked in a video game and starting over with a new life. It usually scares the shit out of me. It feels like death.
This one was weird.
I haven’t had one for a while (a couple of months?). I’ve been working really hard on taking care of my ADHD and moods so I don’t wind up in a destructive, depressive state. Apparently that state is what triggers whatever happens when I feel like I reset. Or that’s my working theory?
Yesterday I had cramps so bad that I had to turn off pain for a while (I can do this, but it’s costly), and for a while I was feeling distinctly psychotic. I caught myself thinking horrific thoughts about this homeless guy out by the 7-11 and having a constant sense of l’appel du vide as I was driving. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it suicidal ideation, but probably a close cousin. Murderous ideation, definitely.
Got home safely and dumped myself in the bathtub, because it feels isolating. The bathroom was the only safe place when I was growing up; my mom wouldn’t follow me in there to monitor what I was doing or scream at me. If I had nightmares as a kid, at some point I stopped climbing into my parents’ bed; I’d go into the bathroom and sleep on the floor with the lights on. Safe.
I’ve talked about feeling psycho with several people; this includes Ray, who has similar, but not identical, states. We both kind of know what to do around each other, which is good. Don’t be competition; don’t be prey; don’t worry or cling. Just act like things are normal, and bring tea and chocolate. Laugh at the blackness of the jokes that come out. It’s probably sad that we both know how to do this, but I’m grateful for it, too.
When I was safely alone, I got the psycho stuff under control, then turned pain back on. The psycho part of me FOUGHT it: it doesn’t like pain; it likes feeling like it’s in control (of the pain, and of me). Being vulnerable drives it fucking batty, as does depending on anyone for anything important.
I’ve been working on integrating myself over the last year, trying meditation and yoga and complex intellectual readings and therapy-like fiction and other things together so it doesn’t feel like the different parts of my life are separate from each other. This seems to suit my ADHD very well; if I get stuck on something mentally, I’ll get up and dance. If I’m struggling to keep balance during yoga, I’ll flip open one of my complex books and read a passage. As I write fiction, I confront old harm and limitations. And so on.
Recently I’ve been working on what I can only call opening up my chakras further. Sorry, I know it’s appropriation. I just don’t know of any other way to say it. The solar plexus let go a few days ago and I’ve been integrating the new lessons there, lots of fiery breaths, better breathing during dancing, more fluidity with belly dance moves–and lots more hot flashes. I am literally able to trigger them by thinking about them now; I’m right in the middle of one because I’m writing this stupid paragraph. I got up and danced to a good fiery song and that helped, not to get rid of the hot flash, but to integrate it.
I *thought* I was still in the middle of working on solar plexus stuff. But the characters in the story chewed up the solar plexus stuff like peanuts and moved on to heart chakra stuff. I spent hours and hours yesterday morning crying through a scene that I wasn’t expecting to write in the first place, but which makes perfect sense in retrospect. The cramps and hot flashes started as I was wrapping it up.
Right on cue.
Last night during the middle of the worst of wrestling with the psycho stuff, I just decided to love on it. I refused to fight back, I refused to control it, I refused to separate it from myself. I’ve keyed a phrase to the mental process of integrating something unpleasant: I am it and it is me. I used that phrase multiple times last night.
So far, so good.
Then, following a thought that a friend gave me, I turned the same process on the pain itself. The pain wasn’t something to endure, to get through, to suffer. It was just me, and I loved all over it, like a good parent loves all over a cranky child.
Slowly, the pain stopped. The hot flashes and cramps did not. I’d put my hand on my belly and feel the muscles slithering around under there as the cramps passed through. It felt almost blissful; world-embracing rather than psychotic.
Weird.
I went out for a walk after that and sang to the Most Favored Tree, trying to figure out what the actual fuck. I was still cramping hard. A couple of my muscles in my back had spasms, complaining about all the cramps, and those hurt at first. I went, “I hear you, love, what do you need? Or are you just passing through?” Just passing through, it turned out. Off they went. While singing, I was able to hit notes easily that I normally strain to reach. My chest hurt, sinuses drained, lungs coughed up crap.
Got home, danced and noted more space in my upper spine, through ribs, around sternum. Watched a couple of videos, went to bed.
Woke up at 2 a.m. in the middle of the reset, aware that it was happening, started to get scared and try to fight it. Then there was a weird flip. It felt very much like Jacob and the angel, where I started out as Jacob but ended up the angel, for just a moment.
Then I laughed and started talking to myself out loud:
It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you. I have time. I’m yours to use and abuse. I don’t need to control you. I’m just listening. Of course I love you. I am secured. (That phrase came up a lot.) I am not fighting you. Don’t worry about me. You do what you need to. I was afraid, but I am not afraid now. Change what you need to. I am here.
Then I went back to sleep, and when I woke up I had rebooted but I wasn’t upset about it and I didn’t feel disoriented or laggy. I woke feeling refreshed and like I’d been talking to someone and laughing. First time on that for a while, too. The knot in the back of my neck is still there. I got some elegant belly dance moves out for a few seconds, until my conscious brain stepped in the way and tried to figure out how it worked. Back to looking awkward. I figured out how to turn a front kick into a back kick without moving my foot, just rotating through the hips, but again, as soon as I thought about it consciously I lost the ability. My balance in tree pose starts out great. Then I tip over as soon as I think about it.
But I’ll probably get access to those things more consciously, as the new stuff integrates.
I bought a pull-up bar recently; it’ll get here in a day or two. I’ve been practicing holding my own weight whenever I come across a playground, and it feels like it’s time to focus more on that.
The last time I cycled through opening up my body, as I first started doing yoga on a regular basis again, I freaked out about bulking up too much around my chest and shoulders. It felt like it would limit my then-already-limited mobility and make me a more uselessly angry person. I’m not scared of that now. It was weird, checking in with myself about that. I’ve lost weight over the last year, but not much. I still weigh around 220 lbs, down from like 235 around a year ago. I have a waist now, though. It’s literally just that I have more muscle. I wish I’d been comfortable with the concept of strength earlier. I would have done a lot more fun shit.
I know people who do strength training to feel strong and powerful, or to ensure they don’t lose function as they age. I feel like I’m building strength in order to feel more comfortable being relaxed and soft.
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Midjourney image for two sisters in a Bollywood spectacle about love and annoyance. Polite Society totally made me want to watch Bollywood, which I have only seen little snippets of. I have RRR on my watch list. I’ve heard tons of good things about it. Maybe that.
Picture of Ray at the Banh Mi Factory. HER HAIR!!!