Adventures du jour!
Today: more horrible headaches (nauseating ones) as the body works out the aftereffects of releasing years of tension around the solar plexus. Lots of good tradeoffs, though. Instead of bending forward and relaxing into being able to put my hands on the floor, I can now pop down easily and have to latch my hands around the backs of my legs to feel any strain. Nearly everything else about yoga was easier this morning, too, except planks. Fuck planks. I feel like hamstrings and calves are pretty tight, but really the major knots in the body that were screwing me up are unfucked at 80% or better. Can I do splits? No. Can I stand in tree pose for 8-10 breaths on each side? Yes. I couldn’t do that before.
I slept in this morning, then got up and read webcomics (Days of Hana – which is going to be a massive utopian/dystopian political commentary clusterfuck, it looks like), then did yoga (whoa), then bugged Ray to get up so we could go to the beach at Fort DeSoto.
Fort DeSoto was gorgeous.
I spent a lot of time reading the LaVyrle Spencer book I got at the little free library and wading in the water. My connections to a sense of the divine are bees, trees, and bodies of water (and setting things on fire, now that I think about it, but that’s probably a thought for another day). I had a conversation with the Gulf/Bay about the stuff that’s been globbing out the last few days.
I’ve been thinking about myself one way for the last 20 years, then having to unthink that in order to reconnect the different parts that got wrecked or suppressed over the course of my relationship to my ex. I’m a complex person who got squashed in a 20-year box labeled “wife.” Everything that didn’t naturally fit inside or could get hidden inside that identity got belittled and erased, punished, hurt. And then there’s the stuff with my mom, who put me in a box labeled “evil, crybaby, & airhead.” (I’m sure those of you reading this have similar boxes for similar reasons.)
I think I was getting to a point where my health was getting fucked up over all the things I’d cut myself off from. I was constantly stressed and sick. I’m really glad I’m going through this, even though it’s been hell.
Anyway, I got up this morning and was just grateful to be alive.
After 2+ years of feeling terrified to be alone or even just alive, and like I’d been robbed of a couple of decades (which I’m still pissed about), now I can also feel unabashedly glad to be here. Instead of feeling guilty that it wasn’t worse, guilty that I left when I promised I’d stay and take care of him until one of us died, guilty that I stayed and let Ray get mentally damaged too, guilty that I let him manipulate me into doing what I didn’t want to do and being who I didn’t want to be, and not doing what I wanted and being who I was. Guilty that I spend money that he made while relying on me to handle everything else, and while undermining every success I had on my own.
I’m grateful for the chance to be such this petty person I am, weak and flawed and greedy and impulsive and vain; it is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done. I’m glad I didn’t miss my chance to do this. I could, instead, have been a “wife” for the rest of my life, slowly losing friends and family and never being able to trust the ones who stayed not to be complicit with the fucked-up situation.–That’s not to say that everyone who’s married is in a chokehold; I know people who are doing great and subversive things with it, and more power to them. I just know that I was living on Stepford Street and losing to the reprogramming and abuse.
I’m grateful to be at a place where I can feel joy and where I can write about it in fiction. Of course it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve been panicking that nobody will like what I’m writing now, that I’ll get judged negatively for it, and (worse!) that it will alienate the people I want it to celebrate, insulate, and protect. But really, it’s just joy, not cyanide. Some people will no doubt get upset, because that’s what people do. I’m really excited to give this to other people. “Look! I wove in this thing you told me about twenty years ago! Do you remember? And this other thing! From last week!”
So, fear:
I had to reprogram my brain and body and spirit to get this far, and I’m not going to let you make me squander this chance, as cheesy and melodramatic as it feels to say that.
Back to it.