Hasty delays

Tired, having woken up at 2:30 and tossed and turned. Agitated, sad and angry in the middle of the night, always fun. Lately I have been going to bed at 9 and waking up at 3, hoping to fall back to sleep for a couple hours. Before A and I split, I was going to bed at 2 and waking up at 9. Reversals. 

The schedule I am on now definitely fits the hours of field work better. When I am working in the field, I am up with the sun and to bed with sunset, usually. This time of year, that's about a 12-13 hour day, most of which is occupied by work. So when I'm on Magdalena, for example, for 8 days, I can get almost 100 hours of work in. Considering the tissue collection and surveying I have planned, that might just about cover it. 

Signed a two year lease on a tiny guest house in Tempe, a 15 minute walk from ASU. It's also a 5 minute walk from the church where my home group meets every Tuesday. A bit on the pricey side in comparison with my grad student budget, and truly tiny (the space for the bed is 69 inches across and a queen size mattress is 60 inches, for example) but a good base from which to finish the PhD. 

It's in a great neighborhood, there's a washer and dryer, a bath tub and a back patio with shade. I have really enjoyed living where I am now, with the dogs and tortoise and my very kind housemate, but I am longing for my own space, no matter how tiny. 

Time to get ready to go. Waiting until about 11 to hear from the car place. If the car was in shape, I would be leaving right now. Not sure how often I'll be able to post here. I'm sure it will be an interesting month. 

Weird delays and bizarre chaos

When I pulled away from my parking space yesterday afternoon, I noticed a little puddle of fresh oil on the street. Crud. I was half hoping it was from a wrongly replaced oil drain plug, as I had just gotten my oil changed a couple days ago. I rushed to the drug store to refill the buproprion so I don't run out in Baja, went to meet a former student of mine to hand over a couple cameras I was otherwise going to take to Goodwill, went to meet with a potential landlord who has a studio available August 1, basically a shoe box but a cute place (for $675!!) about 4 blocks from ASU, then went to the place where I had my oil changed. 

The oil pan has been deeply dented for a long time-- some enormous rock or other that I plowed over on a back road in Baja, probably. They showed me that there was basically oil everywhere around the oil pan. So the oil pan is being replaced and the oil pan valve cover gasket is being replaced as well. It seems like crazy timing, and I have to admit to a weird paranoid fantasy that one of their mechanics intentionally caused the oil leak somehow just to generate business. My trust in the world is extremely low at this time, for some reason. 

I will still be able to leave on Monday, just a tad later and a stress poorer than I had hoped. 

But yesterday was strange in many ways. Heavy, very warm wind laden with grit, dust and whirling garbage and leaves. The wind and I don't really get along. Wind has this weird disorienting and unsettling effect on my consciousness. I have to work to find inner peace on the ferociously windy days that are very frequent in Baja. It's especially challenging when I'm doing field work that requires concentration and attention to detail. It's as if the wind is actually scattering the thoughts out of my head while at the same time buffeting my emotions. I wonder if this is common?

A satellite image showing the dust blown west off the Baja peninsula by strong winds

A dear friend of mine posted on Facebook that she has terminal stomach cancer. Strange and surreal how we often find out now about loss, diagnosis, accident, injury. Via a status update. This person and I have been saying "let's get together!" for months, to no avail. The news is lodged in my heart like a rusty nail and I hope I can be useful to her somehow when I get back in June. 

In the ongoing process of digitizing the record albums, I am repeatedly encountering many different memories from the past. Each album has some associations, resonances. I'm also becoming generally aware of how "hot" my musical aesthetic is. I own hardly any music that I could put on in the background at a party,for example. Just about all the music I am attracted to is bracing, energetic, even rattling and jarring. Combined with the wind, the news and the oil leak, the general state was one of sturm und drang. 

I meditated for 25 minutes last night as a result. Then I meditated for 25 minutes again this morning, after I woke up obsessing over a very familiar, stinging, stabbing set of things A said to me from January through the end of February. I guess it wouldn't be obsession if it weren't fucking predictable, repetitive and utterly boring. How many times can a person recall the exact same remark or statement and feel pretty much completely fresh agony? Apparently, a great many times indeed. The fucked-upness of this godawful transition is occasionally just as fresh as it was on March 1. I'm sometimes alarmed by this, but the counselor tells me to just let it take its own course. Trust the process, he says. Fuck the process, is how I often feel. 

But it is fascinating, how incredibly challenging a 25 minute sitting meditation is for me. I have been at 10 minutes for almost the entire past year. 25 minutes stretches out unimaginably by comparison. The multilayered utter chaos of my mind repeatedly becomes obvious. Roving, meandering, obsessing, worrying, planning, regretting, resenting, and on and on and on and on and on. And on. Releasing whatever it is that has come up, even sometimes multiple things during the space of a single inhalation. Insane. I mean that in the sense of the definition in the Big Book-- a lack of proportion and an inability to think straight. But in this case, an inability to stop thinking. 

Time, progress, stuckness, advance and retreat

Observing my emotions and thoughts in a retrospective way, from approximately January 1 until now, it's clear that everything that happens with me is non-linear. We have a myth of progress or improvement that looks linear, where, over time, we "get better" in incremental but consistent ways. This is clearly not the case for me, nor, I suspect, for anyone. 

I am, after all, a study in what happens when someone loses almost every aspect of their persona at once. Partner, lover, confidant, father, mentor, householder. What was left was botanist, musician, teacher, hermit, poor person, survivor. That is, aspects of my persona that have been around for a very long time and that predate 2011, when A and I started out, by about 40 years. I started putting together the cactus researcher/botanist identity at about age 12. I've been playing drums since age 5. The survivor role is an interesting one to look at, as it formed over several years of repeatedly being reminded that no one was going to do for me what I could do for myself. The hermit role goes even deeper and can feel like my "true self." The roles that feel like our "true selves" can be the most problematic. I said to an astrologer once, "Well, I feel like she's my soul mate, but she's also kind of an awful person." And the astrologer said, "Who says your soul mate can't be an awful person?"

So, one thing that happens when we lose most of our persona is that we fall back on older aspects of identity. We can't bear to have no identity at all for very long. (Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality).  

My first AA sponsor used to tell me not to fill in the blank. He'd say "I am," and he'd stop. And he'd ask, "Now what do you think of when you hit that blank?" And I would instantly and without reflection fill it in with something, anything. Even awful things are better than nothing.

I am stupid. I am smart. I am worthless. I am a good person. I am a drummer. I am an alcoholic. I am a teacher. You get the idea. And he would say, "What does it feel like to just leave it empty?" Terrifying. That's what it feels like. 

Not as much anymore, but at 1 year sober it certainly did. I honestly didn't even really know what he was getting at, back then. In the intervening 12 years it has become more clear. 

At last night's Al Anon meeting, I was reflecting on what it would mean to "put my relationship with my Higher Power first." Or-- to work on not relying on the unreliable. Since everything is essentially unreliable-- that is, being is groundless-- then it's not so much a matter of choosing "the right thing" or "the right person" on which to rely, but of giving up the entire enterprise of relying. On anything. That's faith. The same first sponsor used to say "Faith is getting to the edge of everything you know and stepping off into the total darkness, knowing you will either still be on solid ground or you'll know how to fly." Yeah buddy. I don't step into the dark. The universe has a sick sense of humor. Falling from a great and gruesome height is not my idea of a good time.

But it seems a solid enough fact: everything is unreliable. Panta rei. Except: emptiness. Absolutely unconditioned being. The nothingness that is the only thing that is always there. This is what the Buddhist teachers found when they went in to meet reality every day for years on end. They found the only reliable thing. Nothing. 

So is it any wonder that our process is non-linear when it comes to grieving the loss of the unreliable? We put our faith in that which is only living, which can only die. We exert ourselves to the utmost to keep everything in place, to hold on to everything we cherish, to protect, protect, protect what we have. And, as Pema Chödrön says, the stronger the protection, the greater the suffering. When we inevitably lose whatever it is we have filled in the blank with, because after all the blank was there first and always, without exception, has priority, we are stuck. Left with what seems like flimsy stuff. Left with simply being "I am." Nothing else. Nothing at all. 

We don't usually stay there very long. We can either fall back on some ground of identity or other from the past, or identities that were covered over by roles we adopted on top, or we can stick to some new role or identity, if we want to work even harder. The first sponsor used to call this "substituting one set of controls for another." His main critique of the brand of spirituality as actually practiced in 12 step groups was mainly this-- that people had a grand opportunity for a deeper spiritual experience and that they basically squander it on simply adopting a new persona. I used to argue that at least the new persona was sober and working on being decent and kind. He'd acknowledge that much, but scoff at the religiosity of that brand of recovery and its doctrinaire and dogmatic manifestations. AA Fundamentalism, he called it. And believe me, it can be strong with some people. 

It even seems like some people get away with being sober for years simply as a matter of habit. They seem to settle into AA as a kind of Kiwanis Club of bland social support, well-intentioned service, even-keeled and flat cheerfulness. Whether or not this marks an actual improvement over the misery of active alcoholism depends on which perspective on the deeper meaning and purpose of life you hold. If I think the meaning and purpose of life is to diminish misery but still be essentially miserable, cool. 

Most of the time, I like to put myself into something familiar. The flannel pajamas of an old familiar identity. Even if the flannel is worn, looks ridiculous to others, or maybe unluckily hosts a family of venomous scorpions. But they are usually asleep. They usually don't bother. If you just make absolutely sure you lie on one side only. And don't move too quickly. And try not to breathe. 

Now it seems like I am alternating between brief (lengthening?) moments of an experience of freedom, an acceptance of free fall, the essential groundlessness of simply being, and then entering again into attachment, these days usually in the form of searing anger. When I think of A or her new person, for example, the most common phrase to blaze across my fevered brow is: "Fucking Assholes." So I predictably fill in the blank with "angry. I am angry. I am really fucking incredibly goddamned angry. I am an angry person." It has that edge of danger to it, where it could eat the I entirely. I could *become* anger, is how it feels. Anger danger! It reminds me of this weird saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas:

"Blessed is the lion which the man eats, and the lion will become man. Cursed is the man whom the lion eats, and the lion will become man."  

endless fucking gear and logistics

Who has time for the depths of Plutonian shadows in the midst of preparing for extended field work in Baja? This trip involves not only Isla Magdalena, but also a flight to Isla Cedros and a boat ride to Punta Norte, as well as an attempt to get tissue samples from about 13 different Mammillaria in the Cape Region and elsewhere. I will be gone from Monday 5/8 at least until June 1, possibly longer. 

Probably no opportunity to post here for that entire time. There is no reason to bring my laptop and I'm a little paranoid about having it taken at the border-- are they still taking people's computers? 

I might post just photos and a few words-- I realize it makes me sound 400 years old, but I have a hard time typing on my phone. It's slow, and it pisses me off. 

Back to preparation. The combination of camping logistics, travel logistics and botanical field work prep is a bit dizzying. But at least I've only obsessed over my rage and grief for about 3 minutes this morning. 

How I drive people crazy

I was doing a relationship and sex inventory as part of my step 4 the past couple of days (Big Book, pages 68-70) and, as always, picking up some new insights. In particular, recalling how many essentially kind, decent, generous, affectionate and loyal women I have been with and how, after enough time (sometimes weeks, sometimes years, depending on what stuff she's made of) experiencing me and my relationship shenanigans, many of them became resentful, dishonest, stingy, hyper critical, withdrawn and no longer interested, or even downright excoriatingly hostile. It occurs to me that the Occam's Razor explanation for this pattern is simple: I drive people to act out their worst character defects.

I know, I know. I can already hear the other possible explanations and objections. But bear with me. 

On harm, Bill W says this in the 12 and 12:

"We might next ask ourselves what we mean when we say that we have "harmed" other people. What kinds of "harm" do people do one another anyway? To define the word "harm" in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional or spiritual damage to people. If our tempers are consistently bad, we arouse anger in others. If we lie or cheat, we deprive others not only of their worldly goods, but of their emotional security and peace of mind. We really issue them an invitation to become contemptuous and vengeful. If our sex conduct is selfish, we may excite jealousy, misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind."

So Bill's definition of harm is, basically, that we fuck with people and they act out of their defects. Our own behavior, that arises out of our character defects, becomes an invitation for others to act out their own worst qualities. Inviting people to act out of their defects is how we harm them. Because the whole scene essentially enhances suffering and offers little else, in the long run, reinforcing the sense of despair and isolation. 

I'm guessing that most people drive other people to act out of their defects, given the right circumstances (being "in love," or married, for example) or given enough familiarity and time. But one of the valuable things to learn and change about oneself would be the unique ways each of us brings out the absolute worst in people we supposedly care about. 

Bill goes on:

"Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full catalogue of the harms we do. Let us think of some of the subtler ones which can sometimes be quite as damaging. Suppose that in our family lives we happen to be miserly, irresponsible, callous or cold. Suppose that we are irritable, impatient, critical and humorless. Suppose we lavish attention on one member of the family and neglect the others. What happens when we try to dominate the whole family, either by a rule of iron or by a constant outpouring of minute directions for just how their lives should be lived from hour to hour? What happens when we wallow in depression, self-pity oozing from every pore, and inflict that upon those about us? Such a roster of harms done others-- the kind that make daily living with us as practicing alcoholics difficult and often unbearable-- could be extended almost indefinitely. When we take such personality traits as these into shop, office and the society of our fellows, they can do damage almost as extensive as that we have caused at home."

It's funny that he says "as practicing alcoholics," because even as a sober alcoholic I have acted out these defects and more in my relationships, as I'm sure many people do. I've already unraveled how I show up strong-- Mr. Wonderful on the white horse!-- at the start of things, and then gradually become much more of the hermit (or downright anchorite) I actually am. Underlying this pattern is a suite of emotional insecurities and ego feeding propositions that are easy to uncover. It's obvious that my lavishly affectionate and available phase is to hook a woman into being with me. My astonishingly remote and unavailable phase is at least partly a result of the terror of real intimacy, as it threatens yet again to unfold over time. It's also in part that I just get bored and take my partner for granted. But the fear is probably more operative. "You don't get to really see me, because you'd hate me." Ironically, of course, disappearing causes its own kind of hate.

Other challenging aspects of myself that I have been able to identify so far: depression and the stubborn refusal to get help; arrogance and a sense of superiority; very high ideals and a critical attitude toward others; irritability and crankiness on a daily basis; my default response of finding fault; lying and having affairs; being attracted to other women; a lack of financial stability; not very careful attention to my physical possessions or even self care; obsessions with odd things that it's hard for other people to get very excited about; absolutely impenetrable selfishness and self-centeredness. This list along with the knight in shining armor/hermit conundrum would make a great Tinder profile. Let them know up front. Attract women who like a challenge. 

Of course, like everyone, there are excellent qualities I act out in relationship as well. But that's not the point of this kind of inventory, not at first anyway. The point is to find the patterns that have blocked me, that have caused the greatest misery for myself and others, and see as much of it as clearly as possible. The hope is that the revelations lead, constructively, to what the Big Book calls "a sane and sound ideal for my future sex life." 

Anyway, there are very very very good reasons that people partnered even with recovering alcoholics find they benefit from Al Anon. I think probably the peculiar insanity of alcoholism and addiction operates in many ways, especially in close relationships, regardless of one's sobriety or even spiritual fitness. For example, it takes a lot of time and energy to stay sober. It's a huge commitment. One of the weird ironies of the breakup with A is that she developed her infatuation with her new person largely in the many hours that I was out at meetings, working with sponsees, doing step work with my sponsor, etc. I spend 20 hours a week or more on activities directed toward maintaining my sobriety and helping others achieve sobriety. So to be in a partnership with me means you have deep inner resources and do not respond to being lonely by looking for love elsewhere.  

Other aspects of alcoholism that seem in common, even among sober alcoholics, include extra doses of sensitivity, fear and anxiety, grandiosity, pride, selfishness and self-seeking, paranoia, jealousy and controlling behavior. You hear sober alcoholics with years of time working a good program talk about these things. It comes with the territory. Of course these are just ordinary human frailties. But they often seem exaggerated in alcoholics and addicts. "Extreme examples of self-will run riot," says the Big Book, and this can often be true in sobriety as well as active drinking. 

Moving mountains

The topic at the men's meeting last night was the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. 

I wonder if we're really asking for the serenity up front, or just the *presence* and beingness to accept the things we can't change, and the result is serenity? I can try to meet the things I can't change with all the serenity in the world, but that just seems like a phony greeting. There's an attitude I experience as different from serenity from which I am able to accept the things I cannot change. Then the result seems to follow sometimes, eventually: serenity. 

Not to overthink it. Or anything. 

So how much fight do you have in you? When I look back on a lot of my life, I honestly was just fighting every damned thing almost all the time. Really not capable of accepting things I could not change. I always figured the reason I could not change things I found unacceptable was because I was a failure- that I could find a better strategy, manage better, manipulate better, get tougher and push harder and argue better, or be more passive, accommodating and "nice," and somehow, some day, find the magic formula. Through all of this effort, whatever I found unacceptable would somehow magically be transformed and I would finally be happy. If I couldn't change the "outside world," I discovered I could *definitely* change how I felt. Since the world is fucked, in order to survive let alone function, I found ways to at least change myself-- drugs and alcohol, sex, "falling in love," spiritual highs, endorphins from exercise, food, moving to a "new" place, even the pursuit of money and power, which I'm not very good at. 

A few things are blindingly obvious about this weird way to live, in retrospect. First of all, it takes a lot of energy to try to change things that are just not budging. My irrational, rebellious force meeting an immovable object made for a lot of wasted time and effort. Because immovable really does mean immovable. As in, immovable. 

A simple example might be the character of another human being. I might have a mountain of unassailable evidence that this other human being is dishonest, manipulative, toxic, unprocessed, selfish and dangerous. But if I am attached to this person-- if I have something at stake-- I will try to change all of these things somehow. These things are not going to budge as a result of anything I do. Or the odds are just extremely low. Imagine a gigantic roulette wheel with millions of slots, all of which but one are the usual shitty behavior. Spin that thing! You might hit that lucky number! (Not going to get too much into the motive force behind wanting to change sick people, which is almost always narcissistic overestimation of one's own value-- it is hard to face the fact that we have attracted a manipulative and abusive sack of shit into our lives, since we are such good people). 

A friend of mine recently, with absolute finality, broke up with his partner and the partner responded: "I don't accept that." This is a perfect illustration of the impulse. 

There are so many both blatant and subtle ways that we try to move the truly immovable. It's especially weird because it's not as if the immovable is just difficult to move-- if we were only stronger, or had more power, or loved better, or were smarter, or had the right lever, we could move the immovable. No, we couldn't. It's actually immovable. Not able to be moved. Non-negotiable. 

So it seems to me I need a whole hell of a lot more than serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I need an entire fundamental shift in my relationship to reality, which, for me, is a spiritual practice that is fundamental to my life and leads eventually to a complete change of perspective, values and where I turn my attention. The *result* is serenity, in rare moments, in glimpses, in hints and guesses, fits and starts. TS Eliot: "A condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)." (Four Quartets, Little Gidding)

For me, one significant action that begins to make this possible is sitting meditation. Simply taking the time every day to be still with my mind and watch the breath. I have been doing this for ten minutes almost every day since July, and even just at 10 minutes a day it has definitely, palpably shifted my relationship to reality. 

Reality grant me the reality to accept reality. The courage to know fearlessly and without fighting, what I can change and get to work on it. The wisdom otherwise to abandon myself to what is. 

Beneath this, it's not even about me at all, of course. This is the truth of the prayers that arose directly out of the program-- they are self-centered prayers. They are all about me. Not to be unkind, but Bill's essential narcissism (and the essential narcissism of Western spirituality) is clearly revealed in these prayers. The "I" stands right in the center of them all. If you compare with the Brahma Viharas, for example, it's even more obvious. Take, for example, the 7th step prayer: "My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray you now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do thy bidding. Amen." Imagine the fundamental shock a person would experience if they were literal and very attached to this prayer and had to face the fact that they do not exist? That the "I" they are willing to offer to their creator is a delusion? How would these prayers work if we removed all of the "I"? It's an interesting exercise. 
By contrast, the Brahma Viharas: May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness; may all sentient beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering; may all sentient beings never be separated from bliss without suffering; may all sentient beings be in equanimity, free of anger, bias and attachment." 

Where's the I? What does that have to do with ME and ME being SPIRITUAL and having a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with the infinite? 

Well, nothing at all. 

Of course we have to start somewhere. Probably the appeal of the kind of spiritual awakening Bill is promoting is precisely that we are still involved in it. I don't think many selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, dishonest, fearful and grandiose alcoholics would take to being told their true spiritual path involves completely transcending every single one of their delusions about themselves and reality. (This, in spite of the fact that the great goal of late stage alcoholism is total obliteration and oblivion-- but on *our* terms).

The prayers of the program do progressively approach the a dissolving of the self (with the so-called St. Francis prayer including "It is by self-forgetting that one finds...."). But Bill and AA in general are a product of the West, and of course, as a result, even with its gnostic and mystical elements, AA is completely grounded in the essentially identity-conditioned spirituality of the West, where each individual has a God personal to him or her and, if saved, will live forever. 

Such a weird idea. 

Flattering, but weird.  

A Moment of Clarity

I gave myself plenty of time yesterday, hanging around ASU for a few hours before the plant biology seminar. I've been making a lot more space and time lately, trying to a). always be doing only one thing and b). introduce a slower tempo and move away from the habit of always leaving just enough time to get places. My usual mode is extreme multitasking (even as I write this, I am digitizing Duke Ellington's 1943 Carnegie Hall concert), and my usual way of planning is to know down to the minute how long it takes for me to get somewhere-- ASU, for example-- and leave at exactly the time required. The multitasking often leads to an exhausted, scattered, desultory state of mind. The last minute departures lead to aggravated driving, tension and agitation, because I hate being late, and when you are in a hurry, there's always some asshole who isn't. 

So both of these games seem to be about creating distractions. I've been noticing that if I only do one thing at a time and leave more time for travel, I am paying much closer attention to my mind, my feelings and my general sanity level. In the spaces that are created, I appear. It's not always comfortable. It feels much more purposeful and safe to be busy, distracted and rushing.

In the space yesterday, I knew strongly that I was dysphoric. Caught in that place of just not feeling well but not knowing where it was coming from. Sitting outside on May 1 in the warm spring air and watching ASU students walk by, in a tiny opening where I was not defending myself, I suddenly very clearly knew what I was feeling. "I feel abandoned and worthless," I said to myself, and it completely fit. 

Of course our ego instantly starts pushing back on such a clear insight-- "it's not true, you have a lot of friends, you'll get over it, and anyway, you're not worthless, why do you think these things?" Etc. Jabbering away. Whistling past the graveyard. The understandable attempts to replace the bare truth of experience with a story, a buffer or some distraction. 

But I simply sat with it, somewhat meditatively, and observed my encounter. It explained everything. How have I been reacting to the world? As if I am abandoned and worthless. Why have I been feeling so desperately out of place? I feel abandoned and worthless. The insight arose alongside the realization that it was alright to just hold space for the feelings. No need to interrogate, shame, push aside, explain, run or fight. No need to solve any problem, because there was no problem. It felt like myself giving myself permission to tell myself the truth. 

Of course, staying in it is also not required and yet another form of attachment. The blessing of feelings is, when you leave them alone, they rise up, give you information and then they pass away on their own. They do not have to be managed. Much of the information gets lost when I do try to manage them. 

You'd think that it would be painful to realize that you feel abandoned and worthless. But in fact the insight is liberating, if it is really what you are feeling. Because it gives you a true place to start. Everything else is just avoidance and distraction. Once you get right into what is really happening, however, a lot becomes possible. 

For one thing, all the energy that it takes to fend off the insight is suddenly free for other things. In general, I always experience an unmediated insight into my feeling state as liberating. There's no need for any more story, pretense, fight, rationalization or even outright dishonesty. The moment is just absolutely clear. It is an opportunity to live at peace with myself. It frees me up to start to really get somewhere. 

Two steps forward, one back

One of my regular readers tells me I have lost the narrative line and if I want page views I have to keep the thread going regarding the breakup-- introduce a problem-- something. 

I'll introduce a problem: Nothing has been going on until a couple days ago regarding the breakup, really. I've been continuing to grieve, feeling some progress in letting go and lightening the road, moving on and reducing attachment. There continues to be exactly zero communication from A regarding anything at all. 

However (cue ominous music) a couple nights ago I got a message request on FB from A's new person. Very triggering and uncomfortable. It turns out he wanted to defend himself against a truly nasty message I had sent him *two months ago* and of course picked the night after the first night I had slept through the whole night in months. 

This reinforces some negative beliefs about this person-- in particular his deep need to remain present for people and to be powerful or important for them, to stay on their minds. Why else would you message someone two months after they send you a message, reminding them of their faults in sending it? Of course the lesson for me is really-- just don't send nasty messages to people I hate. Then they won't have any reason to message you later. If they do message you, you can just ignore it, because you don't owe them a damn thing. 

What I had said to him, however, has been on my conscience and the indication from the universe was that, well, here's a chance to apologize. In my message a couple months ago I had implied that he intentionally ruined my partnership with A, was a sociopath, and (verbatim) "a fucking abusive piece of shit." Not a proud moment. 

My apology yesterday was brief, and followed by a request for no more contact going forward, except possibly in the context of 12 step work in a program of recovery. I was glad to have an opportunity to apologize for my outburst (which I had sent him the night A ended our partnership). But it felt like being poisoned to be in contact with this person again. 

The interaction, as slight as it was, sent me tumbling back to where my heart and mind were a couple weeks ago-- jealous, incredulous, angry, unable to let go, rolling through a lot of dark turmoil all night long. It's understandable that my gains would be fragile. And I do feel more resilient in general. But it is like coming into contact with an allergen, or toxic poison. Distance is best. As in: as much distance as possible, forever. 

But if you throw a razor's edge boomerang out there, it's bound to come back somehow. One of the subtle benefits of non-action is you don't get tied to someone who is toxic for you and then have to re-encounter them down the line. If I stay unattached from the beginning and keep my side of the street clean, I don't owe anyone anything. One of the worst situations to put myself in is to owe someone I hate. It's a way to demolish my freedom and be tangled in the barbed wire of loathing, which is strong attachment. 

The codependency of this behavior is more clear to me now. When I outright hate someone, I feel my self esteem plummet. In the midst of loathing myself so thoroughly, it seems perfectly reasonable to lash out and expose myself to retaliation. It feels like I deserve retaliation. It feels like violence will solve it. A person engaged in self care, kindness toward oneself, self respect and dignity would realize that lashing out will only lead to some indignity down the line. That it is a formula for self harm to lash out at someone you hate. When the hate boils off, which it always does for me, there's just regret and foolishness waiting. Eventually, I find whoever it was was actually not even worth hating, and all the energy I put into that and displayed was just a waste and was totally futile anyway. 

To keep oneself safe, restraint of pen and tongue is very important. 

Anyway, onward. I offered a sincere apology. I set a clear boundary. I'm done, once the poison boils off.