Under the water, carry the water

On the road, 24 hours of driving so far, 12 to go. Broken up into 8 and 4- with an overnight tonight in weird little Harrisonburg Virginia, green and humid and folksy. Screenplay material there: a Mennonite community, but also more than 2000 refugees have resettled there. 

"The city has become a bastion of ethnic and linguistic diversity in recent years. Over 1,900 refugees have been settled in Harrisonburg since 2002. As of 2014, Hispanics or Latinos of any race comprise 19% of the city's population. Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) students speak 55 languages in addition to English, with Spanish, Arabic, and Kurdish being the most common languages spoken. Over one-third of HCPS students are English as a second language (ESL) learners. Language learning software company Rosetta Stone was founded in Harrisonburg in 1992, and the multilingual "Welcome Your Neighbors" yard sign originated in Harrisonburg in 2016."

So much time to think while driving. It's usually good clear thinking for me too, not ruminating. After I process it all, I'm sure there will be more words here. 

Sunk

Wow, let's just say some days are better than others. It's a strange fact for me, that none of this shit is linear. I get up on my feet fairly resiliently but, inevitably, along comes an unexpected ass kicking. Such a collapse hit yesterday and back came all of the dark demons of self-destruction, exit strategies, a desire for nothing except crawling into bed with blankets not only covering me but also on all the windows. Just giving up and disappearing. It was a total surprise, also. I tried to do a chain analysis on it but got nowhere. It was after I had a fairly peaceful half hour sit. Just felt like a flood of evil chemicals out of nowhere, despair and weepiness and self loathing. 

It's all part of the trip, for sure. Would be lying if I said I accepted it. But it is part of all of it. I have, in the past, been completely paralyzed- yesterday, somehow, I found a way to forcibly pull myself up and get in the car and go the two hours of CoDA that has been a regular part of my Monday night for the past several months. This is not always doable but for some reason yesterday it was. 

The time has come to go
Pack your bags, hit the open road
Our hearts just won't die
It's the trip, keeps us alive

so many miles, so many miles, so many miles away

They're following some dance of light
Tearing into the night
Watching you fall asleep
The sweetest dove in a dream



I guess, looking back at the last post- I can see the thunderclouds on the horizon for the tumble yesterday. As soon as I got to the CoDA step study and then meeting, I "felt better," as in, I felt basically functional. Considering. And later, I was able to do a little bit of a chain analysis and discover some of the thoughts I had had that, unbidden, sank me like a dark stone. Sexual jealousy, loneliness, self-hating thoughts of never amounting to anything, of being a failure, of being "alone for the rest of my life," fatal comparisons with others where I saw them as being wise, making the right choices, and myself as being a goddamned fool and having never been capable of choosing anything constructive. It's revealing to me how quickly these thoughts spark up without much summoning or even awareness- deep inside my diencephalon or midbrain, the demons dance. 

It's weird to know this waits at all times, and that the best I can hope for is to develop a resilience in responding, a skillfulness of riding it out. I mean- that's a good best, in a lot of ways. Much better than the alternatives. Yet I find myself angry and rebellious at the idea that I could be subject to this total loss of heart at any time, simply because of thoughts that I do not even notice I am having. What a way to live. And I resent the work it takes to develop the skill of resilience. 

A couple days ago, I had just gotten gas at the gas station, and was pulling out of the parking lot, and an unhoused, unkempt guy in a wheelchair with a duffel bag wheeled across the drive in front of me. At first I was annoyed. Dude, I'm trying to drive here. Goddamn these homeless people in this awful, fucked up world. It amazes me sometimes the cold, hard stone of a bitter heart I have when I observe my first thoughts. Having observed this bitterness, I was able to let go and open up a space of compassion. May this man be well, happy, live with ease and be safe. And then I began to wonder. What is keeping this man alive? I don't mean materially. I mean in the most basic way. He was struggling so much. It was more than 100 degrees out. Discarded, unloved, raw up against a fucked up and cold world, fiercely surviving. Why? I'd love to interview unhoused people whose entire life is deprivation and unease, just to get a sense of what keeps them going. 

I'd love to say that these experiences "put my own suffering in perspective" but I'd be lying. "Count your blessings!" the sunshine crew recommends. Fuck off. I suggest.  

Weird Nightmare

It's funny to be craving death simply as a means of ending all the seemingly endless bullshit of life. I've been observing my tendency to fantasize about being dead a lot more since I learned that it is one of the three kinds of craving in Buddhism:

"Vibhava-taṇhā (craving for non-existence):craving to not experience unpleasant things in the current or future life, such as unpleasant people or situations. This sort of craving may include attempts at suicide and self-annihilation, and this only results in further rebirth in a worse realm of existence. This type of craving, states Phra Thepyanmongkol, is driven by the wrong view of annihilationism, that there is no rebirth." (from Wiki)

ha- Annihilationism, now there's a religion. 

And what a hilariously cruel sort of idea- that self-annihilation only leads to further rebirth in a worse realm of existence. I would think that sort of cosmic sadism out to be outlawed. In fact, given the level of anguish that precedes suicide and the stubborn existential freedom that the act itself promotes, annihilating the self should perhaps more properly be rewarded. I guess there has always been this taboo against suicide, however.  

I was in a partnership with someone for five years who, during that time, attempted suicide twice. The experience made me look at my default attitudes- that life is worth living, that suicide should be prevented whenever possible, that suicide is always tragic and always unnecessary. I learned from this woman that she didn't want to be dead so much, but simply wanted the unrelenting misery of her emotional life to end. I think those who experience more acute suffering and who more generally enjoy life on a fundamental level find it hard to imagine what the experience of an emotionally disturbed person is like. My own persistent depressive disorder is fairly mild by comparison to the agonies some people suffer. Once we think of a physical metaphor- imagine a physical pain so chronic, unrelenting and all-consuming, with no relief in sight, and knowing you will suffer in such a way for the rest of your existence- maybe then we can understand better the desire for annihilation for the emotionally suffering. 

But quite apart from the suicide impulse as a response to end agony, there's also this whole area of anomic suicide, which is starting to get more attention these days. 

I think of that saying: "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." I'd say it's equally true to say: "If you're not destroyed regularly by anomie, you're not paying attention." It seems we are bombarded daily with reminders that everything is completely collapsing, is absurdly meaningless, and we are absolutely insignificant. As our species has accessed more knowledge about the physical universe- its vastness on the one hand, both in time and space, and the totally stochastic yet mechanistic operations of matter at a quantum scale- it has dawned on us more and more how puny, delusional and ephemeral we are. The great achievements in human culture seemed to have needed the surrounding context of a belief in human greatness. It seems now that we have a surrounding context of human shittiness, idiocy, alienation, absurdity and misery. The most basic acts of decency and kindness are seen as heroic now. 

For me personally, I usually do simply enjoy life, on a fundamental level. In fact, I am by nature an enthusiast. When music, art, literature, or a person resonates with me, it usually deeply affects me, bowls me over, gets me enthused. There are a lot of people, it seems, who do not experience the world in that enthusiastic, passionate way. I get it. When I am in the throes of despair, or even just flatlining emotionally, nothing reaches me. I can look at the most incredible night sky, for example, and feel nothing at all, or feel crushing despair. 

Dar Williams has a song about sinking into a nearly fatal depression but choosing to live. And her post-choice world is characterized by *participation*, especially participation in beauty.

"Well the sun rose
With so many colors it nearly broke my heart
It worked me over like a work of art
And I was a part of all that
So go ahead push your luck
Say what it is you gotta say to me
We will push on into that mystery
And it will push right back
And there are worse things than that
'cause for every price and every penance that I could think of
It's better to have fallen in love

Than never to have fallen at all."

This is the way those of us who live with thoughts of annihilation ultimately choose, at least for today, to stick around. The old saw that it is "better to have fallen in love, than never to have fallen at all," is one of the major turns we take in the direction of staying. The simple thought I had the other night—that, as painful as losses are, the loss is only made possible by the beauty of the experience in the first place. This also reminds my of the Band of Horses song, No One's Gonna Love You. 



Because sometimes it feels exactly like that. 

"It's looking like a limb torn off
Or all together just taken apart
We're reeling through an endless fall
We are the ever-living ghost of what once was
But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do

No one's gonna love you more than I do."

It does look exactly like a limb torn off. And when we're hit with a loss like that, our first idea is of course that it's awful to lose a limb. But it's weird to imagine being grateful for having had the limb. Remembering all the awesome things we did with that limb, and how much it did for us. Thanks, limb. Sorry you're in the biohazard bin now, but thanks. I would not have traded all that time with that limb for anything. 

In fact, it was this strange line of thought that inspired me to quit smoking and hike and exercise more. "If I ever lose a leg, I want to be able to say, 'well, at least I used the damn thing when I had it.'" A strange line of thought, but it was an inner psychology that worked for me. It was brought home in December when I lost a retina, temporarily. It was brought home in September when I got the cancer diagnosis. 

Along these lines, I acknowledge that much of my recent grief is because an experience that was very important to me never was able to fully unfold. It was a limb torn off before it had a chance to be used very much. I think experience just wants a chance to be, and when it's thwarted in many ways and then meets the immovable denial of its continuance, that is a very special kind of painful loss. The loss of both what was and what could have been. This must be why it is especially awful when someone dies young. We don't just deal with their loss, but the loss of everything they could have done. 

Of course, that is all more story, and more imagination. Nothing that was not could have been. I mean, there is no could have been. There is just what we've got. The trick is to radically accept that. This is this. The rest is fantasy. The rest is never. Never was, never will be. Always could have been, which is nothing. Is not real. Never was real and never will be. Even what actually was, is no more and never will be again. How much more then that the could have been is never, was never, and never will be. 

Sometimes I experience that bracing smack in the soul as a relief. I tell myself, be grateful for what you had, take refuge in the present, and let go. Sometimes I experience the brick wall of truth as if I have run right into at at full speed. Mangled, crushed, bleeding out. 

I had a nightmare a couple nights ago that a certain imagined life was manifested. One would think that would be a great dream. It may have started out that way, I don't recall. But it was a nightmare because, suddenly, in the midst of what felt like the solid manifestation of some of my dearest hopes, I was betrayed, it ended, and I was treated cruelly, with mockery and dismissal. Out of the dark side by side with a dream woman, she said, with an acidulous tone, "haha, you actually thought I meant all of that? You always were a dumb romantic and a gullible fool." I woke up with a start, feeling sick. 

I think this dark face of the universe is at least in part what my fantasies of annihilation seek to counter. Maybe even seek to get revenge against. Oh- you-universe- you think you can fucking fuck with me? 

Hold my will to live and watch this. 

Yet: it's maybe even sweeter revenge to bounce back. In the nightmare, I was unable to detach, to realize the coldness and rejection belonged to the dream woman, not me. But in life, I'm learning equanimity. It's not about me. As they say in 12 step rooms: even when it is about you, it's not about you. This resilience might be the most powerful revenge we can get on a capricious universe that seems to like to watch us writhe. Fuck you, I insist on loving anyway, I insist on enjoying life, I insist on the madness of remaining here. 


  

Storytelling and re-story-re-telling

How do we best go about making meaning out of a profound experience that yet never was able to unfold fully? What if much of what was one of the most important experiences of our lives was, at the same time, locked in potential in many ways, never able to be actualized? 

  

Sometimes I guess the story has to change for people to find a way to integrate what happened into their ongoing life. I respect that fact. Sometimes the revisionism can be jarring- I once made a set of polyamorous agreements with a partner, and while we were together she exercised her poly rights a couple times (including with the guy who ended up becoming her new monogamous partner), but when she ended our partnership, she was furious that she had agreed to be poly. "I was in love with you. I would have agreed to anything." I'm not sure, but I don't think that's how this stuff works- or- well, I guess it is exactly how it works, but my sense of justice or whatever says that it "ought not" work that way. 

I was feeling bottomless sadness last night but I asked myself, well, would you have not had any of that happen then? Grief over something being over is natural, but what if you try to also be grateful for it happening? That helped. No, I would not change a thing, not one minute. Well, except. "I would go back" to one of the moments of clarity that was earlier along the timeline, and acted on that earlier. I'm feeling the pangs of my selfishness and self-centeredness in pursuing something that was clearly causing suffering in someone else. This is just a plain fact: I knew there was suffering as a result of the situation, but I pursued the situation anyway. Darkness started to creep into the deal pretty early on, and yet I hung on for months, and I'm not feeling great about that at the moment. I know exactly what to do about it: inventory, 5th step, 8th step, 9th step. Of course- revisionism is a fun game. It all happened exactly as it happened. Live and learn, they say. "I would have done this" is maybe the least meaningful thing we can utter, unless what we mean is "next time, I will practice doing this instead of what I did."  

I've been feeling anger and resentment, sadness, stuckness and bewilderment. But it does ameliorate a lot of that when I am able to remember that at least all of it happened, and was a tremendous gift while it was possible, and was the kind of rare experience and indelible adventure that one dreams about, yet was real. The price one pays for the adventure is still less than the gift itself, no matter how painful. 

One thing I don't want to do is throw the experience under the bus. I notice this tendency in myself to deny the reality of my experience when things don't end up going my way. I have a lot of negative self talk around it, sometimes. You're an idiot, it was never real, it was a delusion, you're sick, you're a gullible fucking dumbass, you lack a sense of reality, your sentimentality is a dark joke. Very harsh- and it's just a defense mechanism. If the experience wasn't real, then the loss isn't real either. Instead, I can just beat the shit out of myself and avoid sadness. Of course, this is not effective. 

I've also been wrestling a lot with trying to understand what was real for other people and what was not. This is futile, but I still go there. Reciprocity is such a weird thing. Why does it exist or seem to exist at all, really? Yet it seems to be real. Two people seem to acknowledge to each other that they are having "the same experience, the same feelings." Often, however, when things end or change, one or the other or both people sometimes go back and re-tell. No, it was not true, I was not having the same experience or the same feelings. I was deluded. "I was in love, so I would have agreed to anything." I was only pretending. I had fooled myself. It seemed true then but now I know it was a lie. 

This awful thing that is daggering me in the chest on the regular can't have been real, so I'll just re-tell the story, gut the experience, fucking burn it down, throw myself and/or the other person under the bus, and that is the way I'll finally be able to move on. 

Yeah- no. I'm convinced that is one of the key moments that leads to repetition. Our will and conscious minds having rejected what was, our unconscious energies subtly go about trying to do it again, to prove that it was in fact real or to "get it right this time." I think one of the ways out of the half-nelson of loss is to allow the story to be real, to sit with it, and to not do anything about it at all, except to respond in whatever ways one responds. But one way or the other, I find I have to have a story to tell. 

I believe we (or at least some of us) have a core need to make meaning out of the events in our lives. By "core," I mean it is actually a matter of life or death. It's a survival need for some of us. Like air, water, food, shelter. It's not high up on the hierarchy of needs, it's way down deep at the base, at the fundamental level. I have known people who seem to not need to make meaning or tell a story. I've often been astonished by that—sometimes have envied it. How weird it would be for me if my experiences were only existential moments, not woven into any kind of narrative. I guess there would be great freedom in that. But, as appealing as it is sometimes, from a standpoint of the relief of suffering, it's also repulsive to me. Ultimately, I will take what happened, and I'll find a way to keep it with me, and I'll be grateful it happened exactly as it did. The fundamental fact is that I am incredibly grateful that it happened. Whatever ways others hurt me or made mistakes, may I forgive and let go. Whatever mistakes I made, may I learn from them, forgive myself, and be more capable of healthy and loving relationships in the future as a result.  

Story integrates the disintegrated, which is high magic and powerful alchemy. But, being as powerful as it is, this also means I have to treat the process with respect, a degree of awe, acceptance and presence. It doesn't help me to force a story in an attempt to redeem myself or others, or in an effort to reduce suffering. 

A moment of clarity

Shaking off the weird stuckness of the past couple of- however longs. A clarifying conversation yesterday around some stuff happening that I didn't understand but do now really helped. It occurred on the same day as the following strange tumble of events:

Waking up realizing I am leaving next Friday for the month of July and my lease is up August 1st. Emailing my landlord to see if he'd be okay with me going month to month after that. No, he would not be- he wants to snag the incoming students in August, or I could stay until December. I don't want to stay until December, even though I have no clear idea where I'm going. He did say if I could find someone from my graduate college who could be flexible about move in, that would work for him and he'd pay me $100. So I put out the alert and no one is into it. 

It quickly dawned on me that I need to move before I leave next Friday. So I scrambled, rented a storage unit ($48 a month!) and reserved a UHaul truck for next Wednesday. The plan is that I am going to put everything in storage before I leave (except the cacti, which are going to the neighbor's yard, and the few record albums I have left, which the neighbors are kindly taking until I figure out my next situation). So weird- I woke up not really realizing that yes, next week is the last week of June, yes it is. When that really sank in, it became crystal clear that I have to move pronto. 

I've been so buried in the dissertation and matters of my meat-grindered heart that I have not really been thinking clearly. But I know I'm not going to stay here in Tempe after July if I can help it, and I am ready to move out of this little hermit cave anyway, which truthfully has a great many intensely sad memories associated with it. I didn't even realize that until yesterday. I was feeling more like "ah what a shame I have to leave my cozy little place and nice patio and nice neighborhood," but I paid attention and realized I wasn't feeling it. I was feeling like I just want this entire chapter of my life to be fucking over to whatever degree is lovingly possible, and a huge part of that will be moving out of here, even if I do end up having to stay around for another semester or whatever. I don't want to run, or burn any bridges, or fool myself into thinking a geographical cure will resolve all of the pain I'm in, but it will certainly help. I do acknowledge this place as a great place for me to have worked on the diss, and a sanctuary to some degree- but also- a hermit cave, lonely- associated with the weird idea that someone was going to visit and no one ever did, and with memories of being face down for days on end over the holidays, and so on and so forth.

There's a huge difference between chronic low level background heartache and snapped to it flat out clear as fuck sharp as a sword surgical incision heartache and suddenly everything moved from one to the other yesterday. 

Here's to yet another change, not so gracefully orchestrated, but it is what it is. It feels real and like it's what needs to happen. 



  

Goddamned equanimity

The equanimity meditation via Refuge Recovery is one of the most difficult for me to settle into these days. As most of the guided meditations via Refuge are, it is extremely simple:

All beings are responsible for their own actions. 

Suffering or happiness is created by one's relationship to experience, not by experience itself. 

The freedom and happiness of others is dependent on their actions, not on my wishes for them. 

a selfie I took while meditating just yesterday, manipulating the cell phone camera via total enlightenment

Every time I choose a 30 minute guided meditation for the day (60 straight days yesterday, thanks to "competitive meditation timer with extreme data storage" Insight Meditation Timer on my phone- I am detached from everything *except* the meditation stats I am racking up)—I definitely resist choosing this one. I prefer the more personally dramatic ones such as the forgiveness meditation, or tonglen meditation. I resist the equanimity meditation at this point mostly because it is the best medicine for me, and it moves me *away* from drama and attachment. 

The first phrase: all beings are responsible for their own actions. This reminds me that I end in a particular sphere or locus of control, and others begin outside of that locus of control. That I am responsible for my own actions and that other people are responsible for theirs, and that there is a liberating and releasing separation between what I choose and what other people choose. I forget this simple fact quite often. The phrase provides an opportunity for me to do a quick inventory of how I have been trying to "get involved" in the actions of others, or blame them for my own actions and choices. 

This sends me back to one of the CoDA promises: I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships. The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those who are trustworthy. (I feel like this should be two promises, holy shit).

The plain fact is that some people are not reliable. No one owes me reliability, but I owe myself clarity about the levels and degrees of it that I want. When people disappear, I do in fact begin to feel the old need to control and manipulate. To get them back, to make them pay attention to me. To be noticed or important. 

And so, the phrase cools me off. All beings are responsible for their own actions. Others are responsible for their availability or lack thereof. I am responsible for how I respond. Neither one of us is responsible for the choices of the other. In particular, it is crucially important for me to drop the goddamned story. I am so prone to wanting to know WHY- why do people disappear? Why am I "not important" to them? Why do I keep in contact with them when I know the basis of our interaction will a). always be under their control and b). not be at the level that I prefer? WHY. 

It is liberating and healing to drop the why, simply look at what is, and let go. In particular, it is a very needed reminder to me that *I have a choice in the matter* and that I am responsible for whether or not I choose to stay involved with people given the terms they have very clearly set. That is not "their fault," but is *MY CHOICE*. I can so easily forget this. Sometimes the disparity between what I want and what others are able to bring to the table are worse than others. There's "not getting what you want" and then there's the same deal in all caps. And it doesn't matter at all whether or not we are in touch, not in touch- whatever. It has no effect on how I feel or what I want. 

This turn alone is enough to make me want to avoid the goddamned equanimity meditation. 

The next phrase: suffering or happiness is created by one's relationship to experience, not by experience itself. 

What the actual fuck is that total nonsense? 

Having begun to let go of blame and rationalization, and having started to find the center of my life back in myself and my choices, this phrase reminds me that I have a crucial choice between suffering and happiness that I can make, that I do in fact have at least some power to make. I like that the phrase uses the word "created-" there's a generative feeling to that. For example, I can choose to suffer the experience of the disparity between what I want and what is, or I can choose to accept that disparity and look at being happy. Get closer to being happy. Regarding memories in particular—some of which still are unbidden, poignant, out of my control, and feel pretty much ever-present—I do have the option of lamenting that all of that is no more, or, rejoicing that it ever happened at all. Letting go with love and gratitude becomes a lot more possible for me when I recall that I can make that choice. It is not always easy or even available. Sometimes I experience being crushed by a deep grief and bewilderment and all I can do is just ride that out. But a lot of the time, I can mindfully choose. 

Simply realizing I have a choice in how I respond to memories is an excellent step. It may sound like rainbow unicorn farts, but it truly does make a difference. 

It's over. *It is not happening now and will never, ever happen again*. 

In the present, I can choose whether to suffer or be happy. 

Mostly. On a good day. 

The third phrase: the happiness and freedom of others is dependent on their actions, not on my wishes for them. On the one hand, this calls my attention back to letting go of trying to "make other people happy." That is a total waste of time. 

Most importantly for me at this time, I turn the third phrase more toward myself. My happiness and freedom is dependent on what I do, not how I feel, what I think or what I fantasize about or what I wish for myself. I need to be reminded regularly that I build my life out of my actual behavior, out of my choices. I live in my head so much and fantasize so much that this last turn is very, very important. It has provided great impetus to work on the dissertation, for example. What a concrete case of how it is my actual behavior that will lead to the end of that process, not my desire to be finished. 

Anyway, it's revealing to me that this simple meditation is the most difficult for me right now. For one thing, it brings home yet again how important it is for me to be in relationship recovery, working a CoDA program. It also reminds me that I very much value continued friendships with people who are not as available as I would prefer, and that that is MY CHOICE. I can reduce my availability proportionally, or stay open and available disproportionately, or do whatever I want to do. I can refrain from acting out or hoping, in efforts to increase the availability of others.

It also reminds me that the only way out of any of this starkly hellish passage I have been in is through. And that there is a graceful and self-loving way through, which feels like a tremendous blessing. 

Fathers

I've been realizing these past couple of years that I have grown sad around all of the holidays that seek to normalize normal life even more than it normally is. The cis hetero, traditional family unit holidays- when families have a wonderful time- or when we celebrate mothers or fathers- and today has been no different. I see a lot of people putting on quite a show today. Happy Father's Day! To the greatest dad in the world. Thanks dad. etc. 

Maybe a lot of people are truly good fathers or had good fathers. I did not have a good father. He was conscientious, dedicated to being the breadwinner, saw to it that we never lacked for anything, tried his best to be a father, not having a road map of any kind. His own father had been a raging drunk, physically and emotionally abusive in the extreme, and my father had grown up in grinding poverty, and was not permitted to pursue his own way in the world. He ended up in business, as a labor relations negotiator, which fed his ego but did not feed his heart or his soul. He spent many years in the basement watching Kojack or other cop shows on television. He seemed to take great pleasure in the idea of justice, of law and order. His disposition was dour, negative, pessimistic, irritable, emotionally distant and resentful. He was given to explosive outbursts of terrible rage, physical abuse and unpredictable moments of total loss of control. But he especially excelled at the verbal put down, the sarcastic puncturing. the ridiculing and dismissive and belittling comment. 

I was a sensitive boy. I had a generally sunny disposition, was prone to being wild and silly, was definitely hyperactive and probably had (or still have) a diagnosable attention disorder. I was not practical, I was not diligent, I was not serious. I was incredibly dedicated to practicing the drums, which my father probably thought was mostly frivolous and not important. He valued not one thing that I valued, over the years. We had nothing in common. As I got older, I became radically Left, and he was a diehard Barry Goldwater Republican who believed Nixon was a great President, even after Watergate. He may still believe that now. I'm quite sure he voted for Donald Trump. While he did enjoy good music, and music was often on in the house, we had nothing to talk about in regard to music after I turned about 12 or so. 

He and I never had conversations about anything. He only took the time to swpeak at any length to me when I had made him angry or disappointed him. He really didn't do much fathering. He was an absent father, although his dark, crackling, angry, resentful, depressive and hateful presence was always felt. It was the worst of both worlds. 

After years of recovery, step work inventories, meditation, loving kindness practice and letting go, he and I are on great terms now. I'm usually able to forgive and not carry resentment anymore. But it does surface from time to time, especially around father's day. I have been re-parenting myself, so to speak, being the father to myself that I wished I had when I was a kid, and that has been great work. It fills a long aching need in me and lets him totally off the hook. Most of the time now, he was what he was- and that's that. 

But I definitely internalized many aspects of his world view and find I have to practice letting go and finding other perspectives. His critical, judging, dismissive voice is always with me, even after all of these years. The scorn, contempt, ridicule and hatred he showed toward any kind of perceived weakness, dream, goal, desire, intention, creative endeavor, whim or heartfelt commitment and passion of mine still creeps in from time to time. While working on the dissertation, I have had to wrestle with that excoriating demon a great deal. "Who the hell do you think you are?" has been a frequent companion. When feedback from committee members has been blunt and tough, the cascades of shame, the feeling of my father being right, that I am a failure, the sense of being totally incompetent- all of it has been immolating at times. I know I drank at my father for decades. It was especially delicious to get fucked up and send a huge fuck you you fucking fuckball out to the universe that was my father. Fuck you. And when I did have moments of success, how much I gloated inside, having shwon him that he was the asshole I knew he was all along—although that was also terribly painful and hollow, because all I really wanted was praise and encouragement from him, and I never got it. 

I have since internalized the strange dynamic of wanting the attention, praise or acknowledgment of a single person in the world, who will not yield it. I can get all the accolades and recognition from all the people- but there's always that one person I want it from, and from whom it is not forthcoming. I wanted, for example, to impress A when I passed my comprehensive exams and advanced to candidacy. Her entire reaction was "I am proud of you." I have been drawn to cold, withdrawn, non-expressive, non-appreciative people quite often. People who seem to have difficulty truly taking joy in my success. Not everyone- my best friend is appreciative, always, my AA and recovery people are always appreciative also. But it's still true there is one person I would thrill to hear say "I admire you. You're amazing, Here are some of the things I think are great about you." And it's crickets. 

Most of the good, functional, strong and useful coping skills, life skills and emotional intelligence I've developed, I've developed in spite of my father's influence. I have always been effusive, expressive, tender, romantic, generous, quick to forgive, appreciative of the success of others, enthusiastic about great art, great beauty, fantastic women and great wilderness. I have had to work to be at home in those natural qualities of mine, as they were damaged in many ways by my father's negative attacks on me, his disapproval, his exasperation and his flat out hatred of me. It took me years to admit that he hated me. Such a simple, plain fact. But the kind of fact we would not want to allow. 

I hated him too, for years. I thought he was an asshole, a spiteful wretch, a resentful loser, a sad piece of shit. A sorry excuse for a human being without any values, goals, aspirations, ideals or sense of enjoyment of life. Emotionally abusive to everyone around him, supercilious in the extreme, a violent man in many ways. It took me many years to develop compassion for him- the oldest son of an abusive alcoholic father, no coping skills, no life skills, always afraid- a life lived in fear that was imprinted on his very cells probably from soon after he was born. Considering the moiling chaos out of which he came, he did a remarkable job. And he's a human being- I think forgiveness and compassion toward our parents becomes a lot more accessible when we take them down off the either idealized or Satanic pedestal. His whole life was a kind of catastrophe. No wonder he hated me. 

I don't think he hates me anymore. When he hit about 75 or so, something seemed to shift in him almost overnight. He suddenly didn't give a shit what I was doing. He tried to be friendly and supportive. He mellowed out and stopped judging me. That helped me a great deal. He's been the only family member to support my being in AA 100%. He is the only one who expresses pride in my sobriety. He knows- he knows for real. 

And so now he is a harmless 87 year old man, frail, with Parkinson's, unable to get out of a car without help, his driver's license taken away by the state, living his days out in whatever way he can. He watches Yankee baseball. He uses the internet. 

I go visit pretty much every summer now. How can one maintain bilious resentment even toward a formerly raging, abusive, unavailable failure of a father, when one sees him gaunt, hobbled, a prisoner in his body? Whatever he had to do here, he did. He's free and so am I. That's the thing about letting someone off the hook- the weird side effect is that it let's you off the hook also. 

May he be happy, safe, healthy and live with ease.  

Biodegradable

Driving always affords a lot of meditative reflection time- although it's useful to avoid rumination, and to try to direct the mind through some of its wanderings. Driving over to San Diego from Tempe a couple days ago, I was recalling a few things I had done or ways I had been in relationships and feeling a very familiar chagrin. In particular, I was remembering how irascible and negative and moody I used to get, even when on vacation, and how several of the women I had been with bore the brunt of my cranky temper and the alacrity and ease with which things would piss me off. I was not physically abusive but would create an atmosphere of rage and irascibility and make (or try to make) everyone around me walk on eggshells. I felt entitled to my anger and I felt powerful in it, and as if I could control people or manipulate outcomes. 

But my perspective also shifted somewhere in these thoughts, and I began to reflect on ways I had been wronged by others, mostly romantic partners. I hardly ever think about that, really. I am constitutionally set up to blame myself for everything (which I have sometimes confused with the very real and necessary "taking responsibility" for my own actions). I realized that my default setting is to consider myself the bad guy. I tend to think of other people as innocent victims of my bullshit. They are instantly exonerated in my mind and I am on the hook for everything that went wrong. 

There's nothing necessarily bad about that within reason. For one thing, it has made some of the step work in AA and CoDA a lot easier, since much of that is framed around looking exclusively at one's own role and one's own actions and putting aside the blame and anger toward others. I have known other people in recovery who are the opposite, and whose default is to be the good guy and for everyone else to be at fault- and that is much more difficult to work with and more of a stumbling block to progress. My oldest brother, for example, who, in his mid-60's, still rants about what an asshole our father was. It's very sad. 

Always and never are almost always problematic and almost never helpful- except when they are true, which is almost never. 

However, it occurred to me that, of course, I have been lied to, manipulated, betrayed, abandoned, duped, taken for granted, diminished, used, judged incorrectly, ignored, belittled, not seen nor worth the effort of seeing, unjustly blamed, criticized and gaslighted. It was wild to have a moment of seeing all of that very clearly and allowing it to be what it is, without rushing in to silence myself, or tell myself "yes but you also did all of that or worse" or "yes, but it won't do any good to think about all of that" or whatever. 

To be disposable, unseen, forgotten and taken for granted is probably the most annihilating thing we can experience, especially when it comes from someone to whom we are attached. And I recognized in this train of thought my own capacity for incredible denial operating to try to protect me from the truth of not being loved, admired, paid attention to or valued. It is far easier for me to beat myself up for being an asshole and let other people off the hook- that way, I do not have to look directly at the plain fact that there have been times that women have been indifferent to me, taken me for granted, used me, lied to me, manipulated me and even outright hated me. It's somehow more bearable to see myself as a bad person. It's more painful to realize that I have been disposable. 

Disposal of me can go some different directions, though. I can let the sting and stab of those experiences live forever like plastic or I can work on letting them be biodegradable. I feel like the main difference is in acceptance, being real, cutting through the denial and feeling what's in there. Getting real about how I felt about what happened and cutting the act of being above all of that. There's the "forgiveness" that is superficial, expedient and rooted in denial and contempt, and then there's true forgiveness and letting go, which in my experience requires more heart, skill and presence. 

A lot of this comes down to varying degrees of being skillful. It's a clear and helpful conceptual framework that Buddhist meditation uses around harm- being harmed and causing harm- that is simply about skillful or unskillful action. In this framework, drinking, for example, is a way to alleviate pain, relieve boredom, fix childhood trauma and find the divine- it's just that it's an unskillful way of doing those things. It is unreliable, self destructive, a cul de sac, and is a strategy that exacerbates the pain one is trying to medicate. In this framework, becoming sober and learning how to live sober are about becoming more skillful- using skillful means to address suffering and to find acceptance and peace, if not happiness. 

But even before getting to a place where I can simply characterize, without judgment, that women have been unskillful with me, I have to get real about how I feel about that. And I feel sad, a lot of grief, and a shit storm of rage and outrage, both. Clearly, I have been with highly unskillful women. Women prone to playing the victim, hating themselves, blaming me for their unhappiness, having revenge sex and revenge affairs, disposing of me when I became difficult, criticizing me without understanding me, rejecting me when I failed to live up to their ideal, playing right into my desire to be the bad guy by agreeing that I am the bad guy, and generally being unskilled at compassion, understanding, attention, generosity, presence, tenderness, interest and honesty. Without regard to my own behavior, or my own unskillfulness, these things are quite simply facts. 

And all of these years, probably 99% of the time, I have been dismissing all of that and taking on the blame myself. No no- in fact- a lot of those women were fucking assholes who did not get me and who used me, lied to me, betrayed me, abandoned me on a whim, and were in fact abusive, cruel and caused me harm. They did not, in fact, love me. Some did not even like me much. When I became useless to them, I was discarded, as was the plan the entire time. Not even when I became flat out useless, but when I became simply inconvenient. Not worth it anymore. Too much trouble, Trashed. 

And a great many times, they took full advantage of my self hatred to blame me for all of it, and enjoyed watching me take the blame without much complaint toward them. 

For example, with A, I sank into a terrible depression- the one that finally got me some help- and she hated me for it. She pursued the majority of her sexual and romantic affair with her new man while I was at recovery meetings. She rejected, judged, misunderstood and even mildly mocked aspects of myself that are important to me. Yet- after she had violated all of our agreements, treated me cruelly and without compassion, and revealed that she was selfish, narcissistic, ignorant of who I really am and interested only in herself, I *still* characterized the situation as being mostly my fault. How easy it has been for women who were so inclined to use that doormat style, self loathing, blame taking aspect of my character to fucking dagger me in the heart repeatedly, with my full permission. 

It's good to be noting that a lot of the women I've been with have been unskillful. I have a feeling that, when I integrate this into my understanding of myself, it will help me be more skillful when I am getting into a partnership with a woman. More discriminating. For example- how does she talk about her ex? Her co-workers? Herself? Quite simply- is she emotionally intelligent and compassionately skillful at living? Because I have sometimes almost entirely let women off the hook out of my codependent desire to rescue them. The more unskillful, self loathing, shut down, childish and fearful she has been, the better, at times. It all gives me a whole range of reasons to be needed. Never mind the fact that I am sick in all of the same ways and being useful for her is only going to distract me from the healing I need to do- in fact, that's the unskillful strategy. 

A friend of mine in CoDA asked me the other day what I most value in potential romantic partners and it was an interesting list: spirituality, kindness, compassion, intelligence, humor, open mindedness, the capacity for grief and emotional authenticity, a strong sense of radical justice, direct and present communication skills, a desire for growth, the intention of self-love and self-acceptance, sexually and romantically creative and exciting, curious, enthused by the weirdness, absurdity and wildness of life, attentive, generous and honest. This friend of mine said "Those sound like things you value in yourself, also- like a set of principles you are trying to live by- it's great that you are thinking about finding someone trustworthy to spend your time with." I was quite taken aback by that outside perspective. I hadn't seen it that way. I realized I have not often taken seriously how important those fundamental aspects of character are to me, *in other people*. I have focused on how important they are to my sense of self- as an ideal, of course, one that I fall short of daily. But somehow I had not seen clearly that I want to spend my time with a woman who is also interested in that ideal. Again, in a thoroughly human way, with all of the realities that go along with that. The pain of things the past couple of years has been around having found a person with a lot of those same values, but trying to navigate (unskillfully) through a circumstantial bottleneck. Harrowing.  

One of the promises of CoDA is: "I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships. The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those who are trustworthy."

I know that part of growing in this direction involves getting real about the unskillful women I have been with, and the true ways in which they harmed me, and the process of grieving that, including being enraged by it, and moving eventually to acceptance, a deeper understanding of my own unskilled behaviors, forgiveness and letting go. I have not allowed myself this process in the past in any effective way. In order to avoid feeling the fullness of being rejected, betrayed and abandoned, I have usually blamed and hated myself more than them. 

I'm not interested in that unskillful strategy anymore.  

Fucked at the Drive Through

For eleven years, I was in a regular nickel-dime-quarter-dollar home poker game in Santa Fe- in the early days, sometimes three nights a week- Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. That tapered off to twice a week, then to once a week, with some weeks not having a game at all, basically as people got older, fell out with each other, had a hard time keeping up with the endless bong hits (which I never did) and beer (which I always did until I got sober, after which I kept playing- there was a definite advantage to being the only sober person at the table, especially as the night wore on). Anyway, the game was laden with catchphrases and inside jokes, most of which were weird references to lines from movies, usually altered slightly in some strange punny way. In a draw game, if one drew a useless card, or in a hold 'em variation with a river card that didn't work with a hand, someone might say "well I got fucked at the drive through," a reference to Joe Pesci's character Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon 2, who gets...fucked at the drive through by getting a tuna sandwich instead of what he ordered. 

This is an example of an absolutely awful five card poker hand with pretty much zero potential

They fuck you at the drive through. I have no clear idea why this phrase has been on my mind lately, but it has. I have been muttering it to myself when I go to find a citation and I can't find it, when I have some kind of formatting issue in Word, when I don't get a desired response or have my expected result occur in any way at all- fucked at the drive through. 

And in recovery from codependency, there are a ton of opportunities to become more aware of expectations versus outcomes, and just how precarious a lot of my existence is, relying on other people, who are of course notoriously unreliable, to meet my expectations. Or relying on my ability to manipulate outcomes to fit what my expectations are. Or to expend tremendous energy trying. And failing. 

If only a Buddhist had been in the car with Leo Getz and could have said to him "your suffering arises in your relationship to experience, not through the experience itself. Your disappointment is entirely a product of your aversion to tuna and your attachment to getting the order you expected. Let go of your aversion and release your expectations and you can be perfectly content at this very moment." Of course, that's not likely in Lethal Weapon 2, but it's the basic idea.

My experience is too Proustian for a lot of Buddhism to be natural for me, though. The landscape of experience is littered with landmines. My consciousness is powerfully associative and suggestible, and the slightest, weirdest thing can catalyze a coruscating cascade of uninvited memories, sometimes so powerful as to seem virtually present rather than remembered. This complicates things when the enterprise is to let go and be in the present moment. Sometimes it takes true effort in redirecting the mind. "No no, mind, we are not going to think about all that right now. Thanks anyway." 

But that is like what happens in anyone's mind when you say to them "do not think of a chicken." I guess you'd have to be a true master to not think of a chicken. 

The idiosyncratic absolute particularity of associations combined with not being able to even casually say to the other person, "hey do you remember when..." enforces a sense of being 100% alone. Green shirt, orange coat, Gray Duck, red nails, a hand on a thigh during Act II, scene 1, L'encre Noir cologne, pie, palms, tha ha, Tomasita's for lunch, terrible couple's selfies at The Turf Club, weird Indian buffet in a strip mall, a trip to a dentist, a funny lunch at a fancy little bakery with the little one scattering food everywhere (and earlier in the timeline, a flying spoon), a tiny diner, "I wanna go round, I wanna go round,"a knock on the door of a hotel room in the morning in August 2017, an expensive dinner like a real date, 10th and Temperance, Olympic figure skating, pictures of hands, counting freckles (it seems I could catalog for a couple of years) - and the experience, for me, sometimes, is that suddenly everything becomes associative at once, like an avalanche that melts from a particular event into just the entire world as trigger, and that, dear reader, is overwhelming. As my first sponsor in AA would ask, though: "What's the problem?" To which I am bound to reply- "well, they aren't here. all of that is over." To which he would probably reply, "well- isn't that *always* true though? What's the real problem?" And I'd be left with simply suffering, but no problem- just the reality of being in pain. 

A peculiar aspect of this associative consciousness that catapults me into the past is that the romance included "fictional" scenes that existed in writing, in our mediated deep connection, probably part of the danger of two writers and excellent readers having a long distance romance. So my immolation by uninvited memory includes very detailed memories of scenes we wrote with each other in them, as if they happened. Hot humid Arkansas green on a blanket. A trip to a museum. Attending a wedding and sneaking off. Tea getting cold. Camping. Lying on a beach under stars. One learns through this experience that what we call"fictional" or "imagined" has the capacity to be more than real- or one is reminded. I've usually been immediately willing to suspend disbelief. I guess this is probably not true for everyone. I think a lot of people might say it's fucking stupid. Not sure. I do have that voice in myself- harshly judging sometimes. "Dude, snap out of it. That shit did not even fucking happen." That is not a helpful voice.  

The view from the beach blanket, reading Frank O'Hara's "Having a Coke with You," not a care in the world, an experience that a pragmatist would say "didn't happen"

I think my control strategies arise at least partly out of this nature of my experience of life. I think my tendency to over-commit early and keep someone close is an attempt to avoid remembering them. (And an attempt at making it so that they do not forget about me- a topic for another post). Remembering in their absence, which is one of the definite dimensions of grief, which naturally arouses aversion. Nostalgia and sentiment. The past arises as far more vital, numinous and powerfully real than the present, and the future stretches out like an empty and dreary absence. So it's no wonder that I sometimes have difficulty letting go. I have gradually become more and more aware that not everyone's experience is like this. 

Maybe there are rememberers and forgetters. There I go, categorizing again. Functioners and feelers. Are the functioners just better at forgetting? Do the rememberers all end up as writers, catalogers, poets, sentimental motherfuckers? Because remembering challenges gratitude, for me, a lot of the time. However, one of the saving redirections is to reframe: instead of remembering with a gut punch of loss and a nostalgic sadness, why not remember with thankfulness for the experience? Why not? I mean, it is definitely possible. At times. 

But the concept of inequality of significance of a shared experience is a painful one for me. That is- for me to have forgotten and not care very much about a shared experience, while the other person carries it powerfully, and for them, it has the deepest meaning- or, especially, vice versa. 

And this is yet another nexus of why words fuck me at the drive through- words are the easiest thing in the world to say, and are also very, very easy to believe, if you are me. I was gaslighted in my childhood to believe words and ignore actions. I have carried that tendency into my adult relationships. "I'll love you for the rest of my life-" wow, hot diggity dog! That's awesome. But either I find it easy to abandon that statement, sometimes in the blink of an eye, or someone else might. "No, it was true- but only when I said it." Then introducing the paradox of the flexible vow, the conditionally true unconditional statement. These are the weird ways of words in the spells they cast, especially in relation to the passage of time and the exigencies of being human and therefore unreliable. Temporally true, absolutely, a lie. Behavior, by comparison, is like a blunt piece of pig iron. Words are hypotheses, Behavior is proof. Behavior is proof even without any words at all. The old maxim that either I made up or someone ironically now forgotten provided for me: "Watch the movie with the sound off." Does the movie look like love? Because if it doesn't what the fuck difference does the soundtrack make? 

Anyway, taking my power back means finding my way through who I actually am and how I actually experience the world, not attempting to therapize myself into "better" ways of being. Self-improvement can go fuck itself. Self-acceptance with re-parenting, re-training how to honor my authentic self yet find more desirable ways to work with myself- that's what I'm doing now. 

To be able to say: This is who I am, this is what I want, this is how I feel, and these are my bottom line non-negotiables. I insist on living my life. I am these ways: (lists the ways). If "you" (whoever you are) think those ways are problematic, there's the door. 

Getting fucked at the drive through is a given, but working with the experience in an authentic way is the goal.